


Thanatophobia

by Araceil



Category: Naruto
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Action, Depictions of Child Neglect, Family, Fix-It of Sorts, Humour, M/M, OC centric, Romance, SI/OC, no betas we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2019-08-09 12:29:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16449995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Araceil/pseuds/Araceil
Summary: Komuro Ietsuna was a timid boy from a different world, but still, despite this world of Ninja and Gods, he's determined to survive the odds. Even if this means abandoning his Village. But you know what they say about Mice and Men, and all the best laid plans between them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reighost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reighost/gifts).



> Reighost finally managed to convince me to get an AO3 account after all this mess with the hacker on ffnet. And since she lamented, with a lot of side-glances and elbow nudges, about the lack of slash based SIOC fics out there, I offered to write this for her. It seemed appropriate to make it the first fic I would put on AO3 since without her there wouldn't be either fic or account.

 

 

Komuro Ietsuna had always been a nervous, flighty child. Heralding from a small merchant family that met their end on the road in a ninja attack, he was actually born in Konoha as their chuunin escort rushed his barely living mother to the hospital in the hopes of saving her and thus being able to legitimately claim their promised mission pay. She lived just long enough to name him before the trauma of her injuries took her life. Technically a Konoha citizen due to being born within her walls, and with no other surviving family he was their problem now, for better or worse. It did, however, give Konoha the legitimacy to claim their mission pay from his family's estate before reluctantly placing it into storage for when he came of age, or made Genin. Whatever came first.

 No one had any particularly high hopes for him when they bothered to remember about him. With the Third Great War in full swing and stretching years beyond its estimated end they had their hands full with the ever increasing number of orphaned children, and those accidental war-front babies that Kunoichi didn't have the time to tend to, or the inclination to abandon their comrades for. He was a far too independent and meek child to gain their attention, carefully keeping to one side, out of sight, out of mind. He was often passed over in favour of those children from known clans, or born of more prestigious bloodlines, mostly through sheer happen-stance, though it did happen _deliberately_ on more than one occasion.

 That was fine, he didn't mind.

 It was better that way, because he wasn't quite right, and he could tell. Because it _had_ to be him that was wrong. No one else seemed to find things so out of place, so strange, uncanny, _wrong_. But he spent his almost every waking moment with that sour gut churning _crawling_ feeling that everything was just _wrong_.

 Of course he was wrong.

 He discovered that when he was four and being taken to the Academy to register for lessons.

 Of course he was wrong. He was just wrong about that feeling being because of _him_.

 It wasn't a sudden revelation, or a eureka, it wasn't a jaw-dropping realisation, just a quiet 'oh'. Followed by a 'that makes no sense', and an entirely heartfelt 'shit' as he stared up at the anime equivalent of Mount Rushmore and had the last four years of lingering dread confirmed.

 He stared up at the Hokage monument, idly wondering in the back of his head if it were healthy, or even possible, for a four year old to disassociate themselves this hard, and then just as idly deciding he was entirely fucking justified in being born with a severe anxiety disorder because _that_ – that – he had no words for _that_.

 It was in that exact moment everything went black, and somewhere in the back of his head he realised that he had stopped breathing a moment before he lost consciousness.

 

* * *

 

He had not been born aware of himself. He did not slide, wet and screaming, into the world with the mind of a grown man trapped within the body of an infant. His brain had been too underdeveloped for that, the weight of that kind of cognitive demand would have _burnt_ his little brain out and rendered him a vegetable if not outright killed him.

It manifested itself in that lingering crawling feeling of _wrongness_ , or displacement, and constant growing anxiety. It manifested in dreams and nightmares and periods of disassociation and children's 'pretend' games that he engaged upon alone as he _vividly_ imagined (probably hallucinated) different surroundings and scenarios.

As he got older and his brain developed further, more and more returned to him.

Looking around himself at four years of age and _knowing_ that the world was wrong, and not possible, and then seeing the unassailable proof of that wrongness in a scene from a fucking comic in front of his own eyes, too detailed to be fake, too hot, and thick with tastes, sounds, and smells that could never have been conveyed or even imagined at such depths.

 Despite his passing out, he was not permitted to skip out on Ninja registration at the Academy. They were at _War_ , and he had a duty to protect the village as one of its many citizens (he was taken in out of _charity_ , now it was time to pay them _back their kindness_ , yes? Yes). The caretakers of the orphanage filled in his papers for him while he lay insensate on the dirt floor of the Academy training grounds – he would hardly be the first or the last unconscious child left to come to there on their own.

 He cried.

 He crawled under his bed and curled up into a shaking sobbing ball as it all came crashing down on top of him, filling his head and vibrating through to his too numb bones in his too cold skin.

  _I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die, I don't want to die..._

 He could try to fail.... but he didn't know what the failure bar for the Academy was during wartime. Would they bump him to Genin anyway just to replenish the ranks? Uchiha Itachi awakened his Sharingan at four, that indicated he was a stupidly early graduate and on the front-lines in short order. Kakashi graduated within six months at four – though timelines changed between manga, anime, and each subsequently released databook to the point that there was _no_ coherent timeline he could follow. Obito was widely regarded to be a screw-up failure, but he still graduated and became a _Chuunin_ during the war!

 No... there would be no escaping it – he was a disposable orphan taken in at the Hokage's 'mercy', and he would be expected to pay it back in the only way that actually _meant_ something in a military dictatorship war-culture. He was going to be a ninja, whether he liked it or not, he didn't _have_ the bloodline or the family history in this village to make any kind of meaningful objection. To bow out to become a – a _blacksmith_ or a shop assistant.

 He was going to be forced into being a ninja.

  _I don't want to die._

 He had to get stronger.

  _I don't want to die._

 If he was going to survive _anything_ in these coming years, if he was going to have any chance of escape – and he would escape... he was in the heart of Konoha, in the _orphanage_ where Uzumaki Naruto was likely to find his place before long, he was in the very nexus of potential _change_ , and he needed to get out. His being here, his being _aware_ , meant that he could destroy the world somehow, if he influenced Naruto wrongly, if he influenced Sasuke, or Sakura, or _anyone else_ in this village incorrectly – Gods, there was – the knowledge in his head alone – he wasn't trained in torture resistance – he needed to get out – needed to leave – couldn't be a ninja – genin are listed as missing nin – _Academy students are not_.

 He needed to get stronger, needed to _be_ strong. And once he'd learned everything that the Academy had to offer, all of the survival exercises, all of the basic E-ranked Ninjutsu that would be his bread and butter and _life-fucking-line_ , he would escape. He would find his way out of the village, there must have been thousands of ways. But, ah, the barrier.... he could always sneak out with a merchant caravan perhaps?  
  
No. He didn't know anything about the Barrier corps, but the fact that Pein had to go to such elaborate lengths to get through it, and only Orochimaru had ever managed to get through without being _caught_ (even Itachi had been caught, or had that been Kisame who had given the game away? Had Itachi pinged the barrier teams on purpose? Or did he just not know enough about it to slip through undetected? Obito came and went with impunity, Kamui sliding him under its net without disturbance). It must be able to track any and all that came and went out of the village.

 He'd have to fake his death. Not – not too hard? It shouldn't be. No one would look too close? Not in these times. Look at Obito! He had a valuable Kekkei Genkai, and teammates that _loved_ him. No one questioned his death or disappearance under that rock. No one went back for the body.

 He could probably recreate that. Probably.

 He.... would need to get _very_ good at Genjutsu to fool his Jounin sensei.

 Very, _very_ good.

 But.... it was doable.

 If he made Genin, got good, got _strong_ , and then faked his death and found a quiet corner of the world to wait out the conflicts, the chaos, and just.... let the canon play out as it should.... everything would work out. And he would live. He would _survive_.

 He heaved a deep breath, and scrubbed his eyes dry.

  _He had a plan_.

 

* * *

 

He was in Uchiha Shisui's class.

NOT AS PLANNED! NOTASPLANNEDOHGODNO!

 He sat in chosen seat, three rows back and two to the right of the curly haired Uchiha, in stiff silence. His heart thundering in his ears, clammy with cold sweat, and only _barely_ stopping himself from hyperventilating by taking very consciously slow and deep quiet breaths through his slightly parted lips as he huddled, and tried to make himself as small as possible.

 In all honesty, he would have thought he had forgotten more, but anime and manga had always been of particular interest to him, and while his memory for other things was pretty awful, when it came to his special interest he retained information super well. Likely why he excluded other information, it just wasn't of note to him. So, despite there being a number of years between his awareness _then_ and his awareness _now_ , he still remembered enough to both gain a semi-accurate picture of _when_ he was in the current timeline in comparison to events, and be pants-shittingly terrified _because_ of that.

 Uchiha Shisui was about two-three years older than Uchiha Itachi.

 Itachi was five years older than both Sasuke and Naruto.

 Hatake Kakashi was fourteen when Naruto was born, Itachi was five, and Shisui was anywhere between seven and eight.

 Meaning there was three or four years until the Kyuubi attack.

 Kakashi was twelve when Obito was crushed beneath that rock and abducted by Uchiha Madara and Black Zetsu.

 One or two years from now.

 He was _four_.

 Itachi would be barely a toddler right now, a year or two old at _most_. The Third Shinobi War was still in full swing, but would be ending in a few years – the question was, did he try to wait it out, remain in the Academy and pretend poor skill, or attempt early graduation before the Kyuubi attack?

 His stomach clenched tightly, and all he could taste was a sudden flood of saliva that heralded potential vomiting.

 “Uhh, Sensei? I think Komuro-san is gunna hurl!” the boy sat next to him called, interrupting the lecture with a raised hand as he edged away from him in disgust and concern.

 What a great way to start his first day at the Ninja Academy. Not.

 

* * *

 

Practice consumed his every waking moment.

He snuck into unused training grounds, hiding private corners amidst cavernous green boughs. He did not have an aptitude for the Ninja arts, at least or so it felt. He went to classes in the Academy in the morning, listened with half an ear to what little they were permitted to know, and hid his grimaces with hunched shoulders and his hood. As a child it would have flown over his head, as an adult who had been grown and aware and _bitter_ during the political lobbying, the social conditioning, who stood outside looking in as countries tore themselves apart and targeted their most vulnerable members and boosted their strongest and called them 'victim'. He knew propoganda, knew conditioning, could see the Nationalism the Senseis were trying to etch deep into their students.

 That Nationalism would be the backbone of their anti-torture and interrogation training according to Funeno-sensei. He didn't term it as such, but Ietsuna could read between the lines. Probably better than any of the ninja in this village apart from the Jounin.

 After classes, he would creep under the windows of the older students to listen in on their Chakra theory classes, he would climb and hide in the trees overlooking the training field to watch their Taijutsu practice. And when they let out for the day, he would do his homework in an empty room and rush to the training grounds, and try to put into practice what he saw, what he heard, or find a Genin-team to observe. He had no illusions that the supervising Jounin knew full well he was there, sometimes they were content to let him watch as long as he stayed out of the way, one of them even gave him stealth tips as he leaned against a tree watching as his male students did their level best to rip each other's throats out with their bare hands. Others were less keen on having him there, and more than once he found himself being told to get lost – a few of the funnier ones would scruff him by the back of his clothing and have him taken back to the village dangling in the hand of a clone.

 He avoided his classmates like the plague, and the day that Uchiha Shisui moved to the year ahead was the first day that any of their classmates saw him with a smile – not that they even noticed, he was such a quiet, non-entity that people very rarely remembered he was even there. And when they did, they avoided him just as much. He was the weird one, the training freak, Vomit Boy, the _sweaty_ one. The girls avoided him for being gross, the boys only remembered him when they wanted someone to bully. But until they practised as much as him, they were never going to get that chance.

  _I don't want to die_.

 He was so far ahead of his classmates, entirely without his notice, that it was only the sheer fact that he was so timid and had yet to access his Chakra that saved him from being moved ahead a year as well.

 It was a good thing he took to such avoidance, to ducking below the radar, because if the senseis realised that he had finally managed to activate his chakra, he would have been stripped that fragile protection and shunted immediately into the upper years, and primed for Genin deployment.

 Perhaps it was because he had the _awareness_ of someone older, or maybe it was that in his last life he had never possessed Chakra, maybe it was _both_ of those things – but the moment he managed to coax the first embers of that internal fire from his centre, he could not _forget it_. Could not _ignore it_.

 He was aware of his Chakra, it's every ebb and flow, it's every breath and throb and spark within himself.

 At times it was so present, so foreign and unusual within himself that he couldn't sleep, that his awareness of it crawling through his veins was impossible to push off, that it felt like _ants_ beneath his skin, and he _shuddered_ , awake and sobbing and desperate just to sleep. He wanted to rip it out of his body, to turn it off, like the humming of that old rattling mini-fridge that used to live in his university dorm that drove him completely bananas for that first week until he acclimatised and learned to sleep with it, until the rattling became white-noise, until the powercut silenced it, and woke him with enough of a start that he realised something was very wrong quickly enough to pull the fire-alarm – the blaze within the kitchen having melted the fire alarms inside before they could go off.

 He just had to get used to it, just had to adapt to it.

 He passed his discomfort, his exhaustion, his fidgetiness, as illness. And it was a mark of how little anyone cared that no one noticed enough that he needed to use that excuse.

 He kept his head down as much as possible, and worked hard. He would sneak into the bathrooms every night with a scavenged first aid kit, and sit cross-legged in the well lit room, tweezers in one hand, disinfectant in the other, and pick all the splinters and tree bark and gravel out of his knuckles, clean them, and then wrap them ready to destroy them again the next day. He needed to get good, he needed to survive.

  _I don't want to die._

 Everyone thought they would love to live a life in an anime world, Ietsuna was not one of them. He was one of those boys who had enjoyed manga, but had also deeply loved apocalypse fiction as well. Zombies, nuclear, magical, it didn't particularly matter, he enjoyed the world building that such scenarios offered, and the social commentary that came with them. It was through that he came to understand that cultures like the ones present in _Naruto_ , in _One Piece_ , Bleach, Magi, Sword Art Online, Harry Potter, Fairy Tail, they were all _deeply flawed_. Some less so than others, but Naruto in particular, Kishimoto hadn't known what he was doing when crafting that world, he would have likened it a little to the subtext in Highschool of the Dead but Kishimoto wasn't that calculating, he just wasn't a very good worldbuilder, not a Nationalist pushing an agenda.

 He had been a fat nerd in his prior life. A younger brother to a dismissive older brother. Loving son to a loving mother. Caring son to an awkward but loving father. He had grown up with the childhood delusions that he could do anythign he wished if only he worked hard and got a good education, that the stars weren't out of reach. He had been a teenager when that rug had been snatched out from beneath his feet, and all of his work and effort into becoming a games' developer, in becoming a comic artist, in writing novels, took a back seat in the face of having a useless degree, a broken job market, a failing body, autism, anxiety, depression, early onset arthritis that the doctors thought might very well be a sign of a more serious degenerative condition. For all of his black humour in his last life, he had been the kind of boy that clung relentlessly to hope even as he sat beside his bestfriend and listened to him seriously admit to wanting to step out into traffic just so his girlfriend could get his life-insurance payout. The kind of boy who would throw fifty pounds of his own tight finances to buy enough gluten free food and lactose free food for his struggling friends simply because he had the money, they didn't, and it wasn't like he had any hobbies beyond sitting at his computer and playing his old playstation games on an emulator.

 He didn't want to die then, and he didn't want to die now.

 He died anyway. He still wasn't clear on the exact circumstances, but he had a fairly solid idea.

 A bar fight.

 He had been a timid young man, it had been his thirtieth birthday and bars weren't really his thing, but his friends wanted to take him to a restaurant, they'd pooled all their money for the night so he wouldn't have to pay for anything. They couldn't afford anything big or fancy, so they'd ended up at a Wetherspoons in the city centre. It had been a nice evening, but as always, politics had a way of ruining it. One of his friends, autistic like him, his special interest was economics and history – thus politics by necessity, and he was absolutely incapable of keeping his mouth shut because he was just utterly full of bitter piss and vinegar and bile over the current situation in England. He was tired of watching his friends go without food because they made the choice between rent and groceries, tired of watching Ietsuna put off dental care because his employer had him over a barrel when it came to his work hours, of which he did twelve a day and made the pain of his arthritis worse. The moment his friend heard the next table over talking, he had to speak up, had to get involved, and it all went downhill from there.

 Ietsuna knew one of them, had seen him in the summer, _remembered_ him, because it was hard to forget a man walking down the streets he used to play on as a child with a foot-wide _swastika_ tattooed across his chest. It had been so jarring, so _horrifying_ to Ietsuna as he passed that man on the bus his face etched itself in his memory because – what on earth had happened? How was this his world now? His country? His home?

 They were a group of fat nerds, metal heads, alternatives, with pretty girls sprinkled amongst them, aged between twenty and forty. Spectacles, black t-shirts, heavy boots, and long hair. The other group had twice their numbers, skin heads all, leather jackets, stained teeth, and unpleasant attitudes.

 It got violent. Of course it did. His friend didn't know how to back down when he felt strongly about something, wasn't capable of it, didn't have the _capacity_ to know when he had to back down. His friend with the debts teetered, as always, on the edge of violence, always angry, his depression worse than ever, to the point where Ietsuna sometimes took up the large foam bricks he used in his crafting hobby and held them up like punching bags for him to work his frustration out. And of course, the girls. The second the strangers made their typical disgusting commentary to them, it all went down the toilet. The girls he knew did not shy away as he did, they got angry, and they got mean with it.

 Security was called.

 He had a vague memory of a bottle hitting him in the head when he tried to break things up, of being on the ground, of a foot. And then nothing.

 Nothing until here, until now.

 He had probably died in the fight.

 It had been his birthday.

  _I don't want to die, again._

 It was nice, he supposed, to be able to move without pain. He had forgotten what it was like to be able to do that by the time he reached thirty, he appreciated his new body more than many would have considered. He would have appreciated it more if it didn't come flavoured with slavery or certain death in attachment. Because that was what it was for him, oh they painted it up pretty, made it seem like _'service to the village, protecting your home'_ , but he knew that game. There was no choice here, not for him, not for _any_ orphan taken in and cared for by the Hokage's mercy.

 He might have hated them for it, if he weren't so terrified.

 Sometimes, listening to the lectures in the Academy, he would hear something, usually so innocuous, so innocent, to anyone that didn't know what kind of horrors lurked in the past of the Elemental Nations, who hadn't sat through the lectures of his housemate in a snit regarding Imperialist attitudes and behaviours towards Colonies and foreign territories, who didn't know the _secrets_ of Zetsu and Madara and the Kages – he had thrown up in class more than once.

 Oft times to the tune of nothing more serious than, 'peace talks went wrong', 'unknown assailants', 'unknown Kekkei Genkai'.

 His 'delicate' stomach saved him from early graduation as the war reached its crescendo.

 The senseis had begun them on Chakra control techniques, something Ietsuna had found easy – his preternatural awareness of his Chakra let him get grip on the energy in ways his classmates couldn't match yet. His adult mind capable of multi-tasking better, his upbringing in a culture that _required_ multitasking in ridiculous degrees also allowed for him to forge ahead, secretly, in his chakra control efforts. He.... was fairly sure he had decent chakra control, he would most definitely hope so. He doubted it was anything approaching the likes of Haruno Sakura, or Senju Tsunade, or even Yakushi Kabuto, but he could be certain that he was at least more proficient than many others.

 Enough so to try some... more _advanced_ techniques.

 He got up hours before his usual time, he usually got up at six just as the sun was beginning to rise in order to run a lap around the village, he was trying to build himself up to running as many laps as he had been years in the Academy and managed to work himself up to a lap and a half – he had another four months before he reached his goal of two laps around the village.

 He had been so terrified of running into Gai during those morning laps, but after _years_ of only seeing him in passing, of never being paid any mind, he had relaxed his guard, he had set that anxiety to rest.

 He had been mistaken.

 He hadn't taken into consideration that a Shinobi's official day began with the rising of the sun, at the same time of day that he began his conditioning Maito Gai had finished his and rushed off to join his teammates. And now, Ietsuna had woken some hours earlier so that he could run his laps, and then find somewhere discreet to test his first forays into chakra techniques that _technically_ wouldn't be available until he was at least Genin.

 He didn't see the Jounin, just had the vague impression of a sharp breeze pass him as he kept his head down, controlled his breathing, kept his back straight, and maintained the rhythm count in his head so that he wouldn't forget to breathe properly. He was not a natural distance runner, even in his last life he had been more of a sprinter – he had played rugby in Junior school, and been very good at it too, it was one of the few sports where he was praised for his bulk.

 The next time was a little hard to ignore when he became aware of a voice shouting ' _Good Morning!_ ', there and gone with the wind.

 It was the forth time as he struggled to pick his little legs up enough to continue his run up the winding stairs at the Hokage monument, something he forced himself to do every morning because it was _important training_ , and Gods, his legs _hurt_.

 He eventually became aware of a voice cheering him on, he panted, looking over his shoulder, and felt all the blood drain from his face – quite a feat given how red faced he was from his run.

 Maito Gai.

 At the bottom of the stairs.

 Charging up.

 Screaming about Youth, and Fire.

 He screamed, high and girlish, and terrified, and _ran_.

 On all fours, he launched himself up the stairs, desperately, _aimlessly_ shoving Chakra into his limbs until he finally reached the top of the staircase and ended up stumbling forwards face-first into the dirt. Pain made his vision flash as he tried to push himself upright, tasting dirt, his eyes watering, his nose stinging and a little wet feeling – oh no, had he busted it? He'd never had a broken nose, and he didn't _think_ it was broken, but he could feel something wet in his nostrils so he probably had a nose bleed and -

 He was hoisted up by the scruff of his clothes.

 “WAHAHAH YOUR FIRES OF YOUTH BURN BRIGHTLY, YOUNG SEEDLING!”

 Oh Kami no.

 He did the only thing his five year old mind could.

 He burst into tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LMAO POOR GAI.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had Rei cheering me on over Discord but you guys really know how to sweet-talk a girl. Thanks for all the comments~ <3

He cried, and cried, and cried, shaking violently in the Jounin's grasp, not even daring to try and shove him away because what if someone took it as an attempted assault, refusal of orders? He just cried bitter, helpless tears as the huge teenager bundled him into a hug that was too tight and too firm and warm and cried with him, bubbling apologies.

They were noisy, and it was early, and the sun was only just beginning to crest the horizon, but thankfully atop the monument the only witnesses to the incident was a bewildered ANBU who passed them, the Chuunin that manned the aviary within the tree-line as they made their way over for shift change, and of course, the birds themselves.

Eventually his tears and what tiny scraps of energy he had ran out, and he was left dangling damply in Gai's arms as the Jounin continued to sob, powerful arms wrapped firmly, _inescapably_ , around his tiny frame. He was five, and yet he was probably, head to foot, only the length of the man's torso from groin to neck. Literally a head less than half his height. He was so small, or was it that Gai was so big? Wasn't he the same age as Kakashi? He was eleven! Either way, he felt a fresh fission of fear as he realised, not for the first time, just how easy it was for someone, _anyone_ , to man-handle him.

He hiccuped wetly with renewed, exhausted, fear.

It took a little while longer, but eventually he was back on his feet – at which point he slid down to his knees and backside like a limp noodle. He felt the Jounin patting him heavily on the shoulder. Something orange swam in front of his face, and it was a good thing he flinched his eyes shut because his face was being roughly mopped up, the orange fabric scrubbing across his tear-scalded cheeks, and his aching nose.

“Your Fires of Youth burn most brightly,” the Jounin boomed, “I should not have pushed you so hard, to fan the flames too much is to risk being burned by them.” He pulled the strange orange fabric from his face and Ietsuna sniffled as he felt calloused fingers catch his chin, turning his face this way and that, “No harm done.”

Ietsuna hiccuped wetly again, flinching from the Jounin as he was patted on the head again.

“Yosh! May your Fires of Youth burn bright! Farewell, little Seedling!” the Jounin boomed as he bounced to his feet, and then raced off. Leaving him wilted on the ground beside the stairs, his face stinging, and his heart going a thousand miles a minute.

He wobbled to his feet, and staggered into the trees behind the aviary, where he promptly toppled onto the grass, and passed out.

 

* * *

 

 

Seeing Gai had been traumatising enough that he foreswore his morning run and shifted it to the afternoon to make sure he would never meet the Jounin again, instead he filled his morning with those Chakra Control exercises he had been meaning to test out in secret. But it also reminded him that.... he had been sorely under using a critical resource: the people around him.

It took a week of self-motivation and increasing nightmares before he sucked it up, and asked Funeno-sensei for help with his Taijutsu.

His Academy instructor took a look at his forms, and then sent him off to Tsubaki-sensei, the kunoichi in charge of the girls-only infiltration classes, with a dismissive ' _You'll never attain the height and weight needed to be a Taijutsu specialist_ '. Tsubaki-sensei was a relatively young Kunoichi who was only with them while she was on convalescence from the front-lines, when she read the note from Funeno-sensei and heard from Ietsuna's own mouth what the Academy Teacher had to say her face took on that sour lemon expression he was intensely familiar with from his past life, that same expression his friend Amy used to wear when she was fixing to plant fist or knee into unpleasant location. It was then that he remembered Tsubaki-sensei was a _front line combat specialist_. Funeno-sensei was their Taijutsu instructor. He had essentially declared that Ietsuna was not worth his time and thrown him to the substitute Kunoichi instructor and probably  _insulted_  her. His stomach dropped in horror. Maybe he should have taken his chances and asked Gai for a few tips?

“Well,” the woman began with a syrupy sweet smile that made very decidedly male parts of Ietsuna retreat firmly up into his ribcage, “the Academy Style of Taijutsu is very much a _foundation_ style, one that students that do not come from clans can use to build their own styles on top of.” She clapped her hands together and smiled sunnily at him, “Shall we get started, and make that man _eat his own words?_ ” she suggested with honey sweet venom.

“Y-yes sensei,” he squeaked, fighting not to flinch away from her, even as his mind flickered through all the various martial arts styles he knew of: the Avatar the Last Airbender styles, Tai Chi, Ba Gua Zhang, Northern Shaolin, and Hung Gar; Muay Thai that Amy used to practice; Krav Maga that Riddick used in the Chronicles of Riddick films; River from Firefly, Black Widow from the Avengers, Tifa Lockhart from Final Fantasy; and then the tiny slivers of information he gleaned from watching youtube videos, the Tekken games, and his friend Landy about Capoeira. And this was just hand to hand martial arts, he was enough of a nerd to take note of armed combat techniques in every comic, manga, anime, game, and film he ever watched, Amy's girlfriend Lilu had been the South Coast Junior Fencing Champion years ago and a big part of the re-enactment scene, back before his arthritis had made it too painful for him he had shown up to some of her training sessions wanting to take part – his Dad's side of the family were Scottish and his Uncle collected weapons, weapons that were re-enactment grade. That claymore hung over his bed had once been written into his Will as going to Ietsuna should his Uncle pass. It was probably going to end up going to Cousin Jim now.

For the next _year_ he would meet with Tsubaki-sensei after classes for two hours of further Taijutsu training. He didn't know what exactly she had been pulled from the Front-lines in order to recover from, but it killed her in the end.

One day she just... never showed up, and when he went looking, Funeno-sensei informed him that she finally succumbed to the poison that Suna had hit her with. That for the last year it had slowly been eating her from the inside out and he had been completely ignorant because she had wanted to pass on her skills to him. Out of all her students, he had actually been her favourite – she left him a letter encouraging him to keep pushing to his limit, and then break through it. He was _her_ student, and he had best make his name a legend so that she could brag in the Pure World. She did not leave him any weapons, or any technique scrolls, but stressed that it was her family tradition that he was allowed to take one thing, anything, of hers from her home to remember her by. He took her reinforced leather gloves.

He saw Kakashi at her funeral. And felt his blood chill down to his very bones when he saw the twelve year old's carefully slanted headband, the blond Jounin behind him, hands on his shoulders, and the very conspicuous absence of a pretty brunette girl with purple facial markings at their side.

Obito was already within Uchiha Madara's grasp. Nohara Rin was already dead.

Sharingan Kakashi had already been born.

His time was running out.

_I don't want to die_.

One year. Maybe a year and a half until Naruto was born, until Kyuubi attacked – could he perhaps sneak away in the chaos? Get out of the village while the barrier was down, was it even down during the incident?

A month after Tsubaki-sensei's death, Itachi appeared in his class.

He left three months later.

The Third Great Shinobi War was announced in Konoha's victory three months after that. Seven months after Tsubaki-sensei's death. Ietsuna didn't believe for a single second that it ended in what anyone could term was 'victory', and as he watched the battle fatigued, tired, injured, and filthy Shinobi return from the front lines, swapping out for the first time in months, he didn't doubt for a single second that any of them would have disagreed with him.

Orochimaru didn't last the remainder of the month. Ietsuna hadn't thought his defection would be so public a thing, but when the Third Hokage and one of the Sannin get into a fight, even if it is UNDER one of the training grounds – the whole village was going to _feel_ it.

The snake escaped.

But it was a very near thing.

Even from where he was being ushered into the Civilian Shelters with the rest of the children from the orphanage, he could see the likes of Kakashi and Gai on the roofs, bolting towards the chaos, and in their wake – heavily pregnant, her hair a scarlet warbanner in her wake, Uzumaki Kushina followed.

She really was beautiful.

And then she was gone, sprinting towards the combat with Kakashi and Gai flanking her – and he had to wonder what she was going to even try doing? She was pregnant, he didn't know anything about Kunoichi pregnancy but surely most of her Chakra was wrapped up in preventing Kyuubi from escaping, and what remained she would be diverting towards Naruto?

He didn't know what happened, at a guess Orochimaru fled before reinforcements actually got there, either way, there was no keeping quiet about the atrocities that the rushing Shinobi saw in the torn open laboratories below.

The weather took a turn for the colder, night rain often drove Ietsuna away from his favoured training routines. And then it hit October.

He knew it would be coming. He prepared as best he could. He packed a Bug Out bag, and encouraged some of the littler kids to do the same, saying it was something he learned about in the Academy. A few of them looked at him weird for actually interacting with them after spending so much time actively avoiding them (the older ones anyway, he was fine with babies, loved babies. He had an NVQ qualification in child care in his last life, but being male, it was.... impossible to get work in the childcare industry without an NVQ level 4, he only had a 2), but when questioned he pointed out that what happened with Orochimaru could have been worse, what if his lab had been closer? What if the building got destroyed in the fight? The caretakers bought it, the kids did too, and pretty soon it became a game or a learning exercise as he showed the kids how to properly pack a Bug Out bag.

Funny how such things were practically alien in this culture. Surely it was more well known amongst the Shinobi, right? What if they had back to back missions? Surely a preprepped bag was essential?

He shrugged it off, guess it was all his Apocalypse reading in his past life influencing his thought processes as he made sure all the kids had bottles of water, water purification tablets (which he had to get at a Shinobi store, he got funny looks, but as soon as one of the chuunin customers heard him explaining to the shopkeeper why he wanted so many, the kunoichi laughed and said he was a genius before helping him buy them. She scruffed his hair and said it was rare to find anyone with common sense outside of the Inuzuka Clan, try not to die), a ration box each, a multi-tool knife/spoon/can opener/bottle opener, three pairs of underwear and socks, a bandanna, a clean top, a jumper, blanket, ground-sheet, toilet paper, wet-wipes, mouthwash, a candle, lighter, mirror, compass, and a colouring book with a few pencils to keep them busy.

His one was a little more complicated, he included first aid kits, cord, and some extra odds and ends he could use to make a hand-crank radio like he'd once done in junior school science class. He made sure to memorise the process at the time because it seemed like the kind of cool thing a boy should know, and it would be hella useful when the Zombies came (he had been so hopeful for the end of the world as a child – as if no more homework would be his only concern).

The night of October ninth took him by surprise. He had expected everything to happen on the tenth, he hadn't anticipated Naruto being born in the _early hours_ of the tenth.

Nothing could have prepared him for the feeling of Kyuubi's Chakra.

_**Nothing**_.

The Chakra woke him before the Kyuubi ever appeared in Konoha. He woke screaming, jarred into the world of the waking feeling as though a clawed hand of ice and fire and _terror_ were twisting his insides, ripping them, shredding them.

But he had lived with terror since his first waking moment. Lived with the fear, the _phobia_ , of death clinging like a lover to his shoulders and back, breathing cold and slick against the shell of his ear.

And in the back of his head it clicked somewhere inside of him, if he didn't move: He would die.

He scrambled out of bed, snatched his bag, sweating, sobbing, and ran to each dormitory waking every child, ordering them to get their bags, get their shoes, and do it quickly.

Any protester was snarled into obedience. The difficult ones were slapped into behaving.

They were little kids, they hadn't unlocked their Chakra, they couldn't _feel it like he could_. He would hate himself for raising a hand to a little kid, but he needed them up, he needed them to _move_ before they _all died._

And it was as he raced them through the halls to the shoe-racks, as the caretakers surfaced from their own rooms, sleep mussed, confused and outraged at the late hour antics, that the first crash and bellow outside was heard. The malevolent light of the beast's chakra, the screams, the smell of _burning_ filling the air.

Ietsuna didn't wait for the caretakers to pick their mouths up, the door was open and he was screaming at them all to hurry.

Hurry they did.

A group of older Genin rushed to them, their responsibility to take the civilians to the shelters, if they were surprised to see the children with their shoes and backpacks, soft-toys clutched in terrified white knuckles, they didn't comment as the smallest of them were snatched up and raced ahead.

The ground shook, and the Kyuubi was faced with the titanic Gamabunta.

Ietsuna paused just long enough to see it through the gaps of the buildings, the white speck upon the Boss Summon's head, a crown of dandelion hair, and a blood red moon.

He turned, and he ran.

 

* * *

 

The village was decimated.

Civilians were forced to remain within the shelters as the Shinobi went through and made areas safe, dug out bodies, made their assessments. Ietsuna's fore-thought was the only reason the orphans had any measure of comfort in the dark, and they were some of the only ones. Their numbers swelled within the darkness, the caretakers accepting each child with weary acknowledgement and increasing dismay, Ietsuna couldn't blame them. They didn't have the space for them, and they didn't have the numbers of people to care of them. For now, they were too shell-shocked, too terrified, to do anything more than sit. But when the horror wore off, there would be the messy, painful, adjustment period.

Ietsuna wasn't looking forward to it.

But for all that he used to think people were awful, they were also pretty incredible too.

Civilians especially.

In the darkness, mothers went from group to group with hot meals, young men cleared out discreet corners and created privacy curtains and people were able to bathe. People that had been separated were found and reunited, those who had lost people were never left alone. A hundred friendships fractured, but a thousand more were forged. They were forced to remain within the tunnels for a week before being permitted to return to their ruined village and begin to try and pick up the pieces.

The orphanage was partially destroyed and they were shuffled into a Genin Corps dormitory while it was being rebuilt.

The caretakers said nothing about the ruined records room.

They were moved back in with very little fanfare. He got his own room as one of the older kids with Shinobi training, he was given a lot more freedom as well, and the caretakers no longer ignored him – he wasn't sure if he appreciated that to be honest. It meant a lot more attention paid to his comings and goings, to his training. There was a lot of talk of early graduation to bolster their flagging Shinobi numbers, unrecovered from the Third War and now further cut by the Kyuubi.

He wasn't sure what to think about that.

It was practically his _ideal_ moment in order to make his escape.

But he now had a problem.

Naruto himself.

It had been sheer happen-stance, pure mistake, he hadn't _meant for this_.

Nightmares jarred him awake often these days. Thankfully he was one of those people who could get back to sleep afterwards, he had trained himself for it. This had been a particularly bad one and his mouth felt like glue, so he'd gone to the kitchen to get some water – and heard a baby crying.

Not unusual, there were a lot of babies in the orphanage.

What was unusual was that ten minutes later, the baby was still crying, and no one had come to check on it.

Figuring the caretakers were too deeply asleep to hear, he finished his glass of water and went to go and tend to the infant himself. He'd handled more than his fair share of infants, he was a pro at the wriggly nappy change game.

That the baby was in a room to himself should have been his first clue. That it was utterly avoid of anything but crib and mattress should have been his other.

But none of this occurred to him as he shuffled in, yawning, and wincing a little at the volume and gathered the tiny little thing up into his arms. Barely two weeks old, still bright pink and small enough that at six he could handle it with ease.

“What's up with you, huh? What's all the noise about?” he cooed as he gently rocked the furiously wailing infant. A quick check confirmed a very full nappy. “Well that probably doesn't feel very nice. Let's get that off, shall we?” he asked before heading to the cupboards where he dragged out a changing roll, fresh nappy, and some wet-wipes. He could change a nappy in the dark, no problem, there was enough light from the open curtains for him to see, and the baby was too young to have much muscle control so not yet able to wriggle enough to make his job difficult.

Wrapping the messy parcel up to be thrown, he cleaned the baby up, made sure to use some powder to prevent any unpleasant rashes from forming – though he was fairly sure the poor thing already had one but couldn't tell in the dark. He got him once again in a clean nappy, and tucked up against his chest where his outraged wailing had lessened, but he was still upset.

“There we go, all clean and sweet smelling now,” he announced, gently bouncing the little thing, idly wondering why the caretakers still hadn't shown up yet – it was pushing on that time for their rounds, there was always a patrol at least once a night, and they took it in turns to tend to the infants too young to sleep through. Well, the nappy had been full, and cold, so perhaps they'd checked in on him already before he woke? That meant he probably hadn't had his night feeding. “I bet you're hungry, huh?”

He took the baby into the kitchen and got some of the pre-made formula that the caretakers had in the fridge and set to warming it up even as he bounced the baby up and down and chattered quietly to him.

After feeding and burping him, he took the now much more content and quiet baby back into his room and rocked him until he fell back asleep, set him into his crib, and returned to his own bed where he fell asleep as soon as he landed on his mattress. He had no dreams, and woke up happy and refreshed for once.

The next night would see a strange repeat of the one prior in that he would wake to the sound of the baby squalling furiously, he lay awake and heard the caretakers on their rounds, but still the baby didn't quiet. In fact, they didn't even go near that room. Confused and a little annoyed now because he couldn't sleep, he got out of bed and went to the still crying baby.

The same story as last time, a full nappy, and a hungry tummy.

Sighing in annoyance he got the little one clean and comfy once again before taking him into the kitchen to get him something to eat, muttering unkind things about the caretakers as he went, didn't they know he was a growing boy who needed his sleep, yeah sure he didn't get _much_ because of the horrible nightmares but he'd like to see them handle _feeling_ Kyuubi's chakra, bloody waking up to it, see how they handled it. He didn't need them purposefully making his life harder, that was mean, he didn't get enough sleep as it was. Not that he blamed the baby, no, he was little and didn't know how to tell everyone he was upset without screaming, it wasn't his fault, not at all.

It was after he'd checked the temperature, and gently offered it to the ravenous infant that he turned to lean against the kitchen sink and got a look at the baby's face in the street-lights outside and froze, his eyes widening when he spotted the thin black marks on his cheeks, and felt all the blood drain from his face.

Naruto.

He floundered in horror for a moment, before he realised that.... the Caretakers had been _actively ignoring him_.

He swallowed hard, staring down at the blind infant, at the impossibly blue eyes that blinked slowly up at him, at the soft downy dandelion coloured hair, at the... there were no blankets in there, not even a pillow, there was no onesie, no clothes. His stomach turned sour and his lower lip wobbled. Surely they wouldn't – he was just a _baby_ , they weren't already treating him poorly? They wouldn't _dare_ , right? Surely there would be ANBU watching over him, right? Making sure that Danzou didn't try to spirit him – or were the ANBU Danzou's? And he didn't dare try stealing the Jinchuuriki because he knew that Hiruzen would go for him with a fire and a mind for murder?

He swallowed, wetting his lips.

He could not get involved with the Jinchuuriki, with Naruto, he might mess _everything_ up.

Making sure the baby was burped appropriately, he carefully returned him to his bed, trying not to react when the infant whimpered at the abandonment, sprawled helplessly on his back within the crib, not even a blanket to his name. It was.... fucking heartbreaking was what it was.

But he couldn't risk it.

_I don't want to die_.

So he went back to bed, and lay awake for the rest of the night, unable to sleep, his stomach twisting and churning sourly, sickly. He went to the Academy the next day and when early graduation was brought up he threw up all over his desk and was sent home.

Naruto was crying desolately in his room, alone again.

He could see the caretakers with the other infants, pointedly ignoring his room as they went about their usual every day business. Whenever one of the well meaning little kids pointed to the room and told them the baby was crying, they would pat them on the head and tell them that they were busy and _that_ baby could wait a little longer, it wouldn't hurt them any.

His stomach twisted, and he threw up again.

Naruto would be fine. He would be _fine_ – he survived last time! He was fine! He – he – he was a _**baby**_.

Sobbing a little, Ietsuna curled up on the floor of the bathroom, his face in his knees as he shook. How could anyone treat a _baby_ like that? He knew people did, and treated them worse at that, none of the caretakers would dare risk raising a hand to the Hokage's charge but – but – neglect.... that could destroy a baby. They _needed_ physical contact, needed affection and care and attention, otherwise they.... they grew up crooked, messed up. And oh, oh gods, he had, hadn't he? He'd latched onto Sasuke, the first positive relationship he hadn't _actively_ had to fight for, the first positive relationship that didn't involve hatred for the Kyuubi, and he'd clung to that damaging, violent, abusive relationship with both hands until it nearly killed him, until it _did_ kill him – and it he had been anyone else but the host of the Kyuubi it _would_ have killed him.

But... but that was... his connection to Sasuke was the reason they survived. It was needed. But – but....

He was a baby.

He bowed his head and stopped crying. And just breathed.

So this was where his line was.

He huffed a wet, bitter, chuckle at himself.

_I don't want to die._

_But I can't ignore this._

_I can't live with myself if I allow this._

_I don't want to die._

He got to his feet, he went to Naruto's room, and he picked the baby up.

“Hey, ANBU guys,” he called, wetting his lips, “I'm taking care of him now. Can you move the crib to my room while I get him something to eat?” he asked before turning on heel and leaving the room to do just that.

“Oh, Komuro-kun, you needn't worry about that. We were going to see to it next,” one of the caretakers called, spotting him with the crying baby tucked up against his neck.

“It's okay,” he returned as he got a bottle out of the fridge without looking at her. “I'll take care of him now. Since you don't want to.” The words slipped out without his meaning to say them, but now that he'd said them, he didn't regret them. He didn't feel anxious, not the usual way anymore, his insides were tight and shivery like usual, but it wasn't a sour queasy churning, it was hot and quick, and _righteous_.

“I beg your pardon?” the woman demanded.

Ietsuna shrugged a shoulder, “You heard me, ma'am.”

He took the bottle of formula once it was warm enough and retreated to his room.

The crib was waiting at the foot of his bed.

What mess had he gotten himself into?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The more I write this, the more Ietsuna accidentally seems to be taking after my friend Tom. I'm going to have to steer that away a little bit, Tom's an awesome guy and he does read my stuff sometimes, I don't want to make him uncomfortable.


	3. Chapter 3

He knew it would have only been a matter of time before he faced some kind of backlash for taking responsibility over Naruto, he hadn't expected it to happen so quickly though. It took only a few days before he started hearing the whispers as he left the Academy, parents eyeing him with confusion and disgust as they carefully steered their children away from him, telling them to leave him alone, not to play with him, that he was a bad influence.

Only one person sought to subject him to their anger in place of Naruto, slapping him across the face as he walked down the high-street back to the orphanage _entirely_ out of the blue. He staggered and heard the man shout something along the lines of 'How dare you', but when he looked up all he saw was a flicker of a figure in grey armour with a white mask before the man was gone. ANBU whisking him away.

He clutched his face in bewildered fear.

Wait.... what – did that – mean?

Was he under ANBU protection as well, because he took over Naruto's care?

He was so confused, but.... he looked at the other adults around him, how they were now carefully, _pointedly_ , ignoring him and continuing their day as if he weren't even there. No longer glaring and whispering, they were pretending he didn't exist, like _nothing had just happened_.

He rubbed his stinging cheek and looked towards the roofs, but, of course, he couldn't see a single sign of any ANBU, though he did see a member of the Uchiha Military Police watching the crowd with Sharingan eyes before he caught sight of Ietsuna's inquisitive stare. Immediately the blood coloured eyes flickered back into charcoal and the Shinobi turned heel and found something else to do.

He swallowed anxiously and sped off back to the orphanage, mentally deciding that he was going to have to start using the back-streets in order to stay out of everyone's way.

Naruto was crying in his own filth when he got back into his room, ravenously hungry as well.

He stared down at the baby in rising dismay, none of the caretakers had tended him since Ietsuna left that morning. Helpless anger welled up in the pit of his stomach like vomit, but made of _glass_. He swallowed it down hard, and immediately decided that he was going to have to bathe the baby before feeding him this time – he was going to develop nappy rash and who knew what else otherwise.

He made sure Naruto was tended to, cleaned, changed, and fed, before he used a towel as a sling to basically strap the baby to his chest so he could do his homework and keep an arm around the newborn at all times, giving him that physical contact that they desperately _needed_ at this early stage. He resolutely focused all of his attention on what was in front of him, on the little bundle of soft warmth on his left side, the infant finally quieting down with the sound of his heartbeat – probably hummingbird quick – filling his ears. He did not think about tomorrow, about Taijutsu practice with scowling senseis, about blows that weren't pulled enough because they knew they wouldn't get in trouble for it, about stones being thrown, about Tsubaki-sensei's absence, about rushing home only to find a baby in tears, hungry and filthy and cold and _frightened_ , didn't think about ignorant, cold, _cruel_ people who were lost in anger and pain who might try to take it out on him because they couldn't take it out on the one responsible. Didn't think about how he was going to make this work because he didn't _know_ and – and –

He finished his assignments, carefully set them into his bag, tucked it under his bed, put Naruto into his crib, wrapped up in the towel, sound asleep. And then he crawled into the cupboard where his clothes were hung up, and he _cried_. Ugly, bitter, heaving, sobs that left his chest aching, his nose running, and his eyes _burning._

He curled into a tight ball and cried himself to sleep.

 

* * *

 

The next three days followed the same routine.

During the night he would wake up twice to Naruto's sniffling whimpers, change him, feed him, burp him, and then bundle him back up to sleep – by the second night he stopped bothering with the crib and slept instead with the baby on his chest because otherwise he just wouldn't settle and Ietsuna was _tired_. He would get up with the dawn, get washed, dressed, grab himself some breakfast before everyone else woke, take a bottle for Naruto, a little bag of stuff he might need, and then go find a quiet corner for Chakra control exercises. The sling made a constant appearance in those mornings because he could do a lot of those exercises with Naruto strapped to him no problem. When it came to the riskier ones, he would lay him down in the shade of a tree, bracket him with his bag and something else, before going on to either perfect his Tree Walking or his Water Walking depending on whether Naruto was awake or sleeping. When his training finished up, he would feed the baby one last time, change him, take him back to the orphanage before running back to the Academy where he would slide into his seat just in time.

The Academy took on a new definition of unpleasant with both senseis and parents actively encouraging their children to be either dismissive or outright malicious towards him, and he was getting more and more fed up and _tired_ of it. He tried to brush it off, tried to ignore it, avoid it. He might have been six, but he was going on _thirty-six_ at the same time, or so he kept telling himself time and again as he hid from his classmates during lunch and break so he could eat in peace.

Taijutsu practice though.... If he had any lingering affection or respect for Funeno-sensei, it dried up faster than a lemon slice left in a desert.

As a rule, Ietsuna did not like losing his temper.

He was a timid, soft-spoken boy in this life and the last. _Placid_. Laid back.

That did not mean he didn't have a temper.

The kids didn't know what was going on, he did, which was why he glared so hard at Funeno-sensei when the man paired him with his prized Inuzuka student.

Inuzuka Dokuro was the biggest boy in their class, slated as a front-line Taijutsu specialist, he was known for being heavy handed, and getting rough in the practice ring. Ietsuna was the smallest, Funeno-sensei deemed him hopeless at Taijutsu because he didn't use what Tsubaki-sensei helped him build against his classmates because he didn't believe in hurting children. But.

Evidentially Funeno-sensei didn't share that belief.

The Inuzuka taijutsu style left a lot of openings. It relied on their canine partners covering for them, and the speed and aggression of their style preventing anyone from taking advantage of those openings.

Dokuro did not have his puppy with him in this match.

And Ietsuna was not feeling particularly lenient this morning.

The first attack was Dokuro's last.

Ietsuna twisted out of line from his attack, redirecting his swinging blow with a simple Tai Chi open palmed push to his wrist. And then he followed it up with a Muay Thai knee to his wide-open chest as the gentle redirection knocked him off balance.

The boy grunted, all the air driven out of his chest, but Ietsuna wrapped his arm around his outstretched arm and locked him down and kneed him _again_ , and _again, and again_.

He swung his hips, sliding his arm free of Dokuro's even as he hooked an ankle behind his feet and then turned, shoving a hand into the child's face and slapping him backwards off his feet and onto his back before he turned and plunged his hand down –

fingers stopping less than an inch from the boy's eyes.

He glared up at Funeno-sensei who looked as though someone had forced a lime between his teeth, rind and all.

“Penalty Komuro! This is a sparring match, pull your blows!” the teacher barked.

He grit his teeth and pulled his hand away from Dokuro's eyes, the Inuzuka staring at him as if he'd never laid eyes on him before as the orphan jerkily turned on heel and began his ten laps around the Academy as penalty for going too hard on a sparring partner.

He got partnered with other students in Taijutsu after that, but rarely did they try going too hard on him, and in return he didn't go hard on them. He still got called for Penalty laps regardless though – he seethed quietly as he planned and ran and tried to work out how to change his circumstances. The only thing he could do about the Academy is graduate early, he could do that, it would be a fucking _breeze_. He had purposefully held himself back and under the radar for two years even after he activated his Chakra, he had the Taijutsu scores, he had dedicated his every waking moment to practising Chakra control and Ninjutsu – he already knew more history, geography, and what not than his classmates, the only things he would have trouble with was the Shinobi rules of conduct and those other conditioning things that he had spent so much time actively ignoring because holy shit that was some low-level brainwashing techniques.

Dealing with the Academy was easy. Become a Genin, no longer have to worry about the Academy.

It however opened up two different kettles of fish.

As a Genin he would be classed as an official adult and 'age out' of the orphanage, meaning he would go into social housing at the Genin Barracks. And they did not allow babies. He would have to leave Naruto behind at the orphanage to the uncaring overseers and the ANBU who were likely not allowed to interfere with him, or didn't _want_ to. Protecting the Jinchuuriki was a very different beast to taking care of him, he could understand that intellectually, but he still wanted to shake them until he rattled some common sense into their skulls. He was _six_. He should _not_ be responsible for an infant. But until someone else _would be_ , he was all that Naruto had.

So.

Become Genin. Get own place.

That meant missions ASAP.

Well, as an early graduate that would mean he would get shuffled into an already formed team that was missing a member for whatever reason. An already seasoned Genin team of who knew what age bracket. Troublesome, but doable. He would have to work extra hard to pull his weight.

But that left the problem of who was going to take care of Naruto while he was away at team-training and on missions.

He could try hiring a Genin team? But there was no guarantee they would take care of him _either_ because the caretakers at the orphanage certainly weren't, and they were being paid a lot more than what he could offer for a D-rank mission. And it would be an _extended_ mission as well, every day. D-ranks could be hired out for the equivalent of pocket change, but he would have to do a great deal of work in order to afford a team _every day_ to tend to Naruto, and they would have to be carefully vetted first, but he didn't _know_ everyone, and at this point could he even trust anyone?

Could he find some means of _coincidentally_ running into Uchiha Mikoto and begging her, as the wife of the Police Chief, a former Jounin, a Kunoichi mother from a well respected clan, to please watch over the baby while he went to the Academy? Pretty please? You're _obviously_ the most trust worthy person I can access at this moment in time, I'm so sorry to be so presumptuous but I'm at my wits end, please?

The Hokage was in his bedroom.

He blinked in utter bewilderment and confusion as he was jarred out of his thinking to find the old man sat on his bed, a quiet, content, Naruto dosing in his arms.

Automatically, he tried to dispel a Genjutsu that didn't exist, and the Hokage chuckled at his reaction.

“Komuro Ietsuna, I apologise for the intrusion, but I thought it past time we had a little chat,” the _God of Shinobi said while sat on his bed in his bedroom that he was in there alone with him in._

He squeaked a little in acknowledgement, nodding like a disturbed bobblehead feeling a shiver of abject terror work its way down his spine. From the corner of his eye he could see his skin rise in very _very_ visible goosebumps, and his stomach flipped over and soured. Oh god, was the Hokage going to take his sudden anxiety at his appearance as a sign of insubordination or displeasure or disloyalty and separate him from Naruto because they couldn't risk any negative influence on the container? Was he going to be thrown into T &I to ascertain what his motivations are towards the baby? He had ignored most of their Torture and Interrogation conditioning because it involved rabid nationalist memorisation and repetition and the enforcing of Konoha as The Best and they should Never Betray The Village because The Village was Everything and the Will Of Fire was Second Only To Kami, and The Hokage IS Kami.

He was getting light headed, was he using some kind of jutsu on him already? What, no acquaintances, no tea? Not even the pretence of talk, he was just going to fucking suffocate him in his own doorway?

His chest hurt.

Everything went black.

 

* * *

 

Sarutobi Hiruzen probably should have seen that coming he decided as the six year old hyperventilated and then passed out. He caught the young boy before he hit the ground and carefully hoisted him up along with baby Naruto and chuckled a little sheepishly as one of his ANBU dropped down beside him and took the Academy Student off his hands with a distinct air of disapproval.

“Yes, yes, you warned me,” he agreed with the silent Hawk who swiftly divested the boy of his backpack and winter-coat before laying him on the bed. “I didn't anticipate his alarm being so strong as to pass out though.” He rubbed his chin as he observed the tiny boy as Hawk pulled the thin blankets up to his chin, “You said he had no problem speaking to you?” he asked turning his head to the ninja.

He shook his head, “Yes, Hokage-sama. We didn't show ourselves, unless he is a Chakra Sensor he would have had no way of knowing we were there, and yet he was very clear when he addressed the room.”

Hiruzen rocked Naruto absently in his arm as he stared down at the boy, at his _red_ hair.

The Uzumaki clan were well known to have Chakra Sensors amongst their numbers, and what he had managed to pull up on the boy's file was sparse. Orphaned. His father's family had been a fairly well off Merchant line heralding from Water Country's outer islands, his mother's line was related to Fire Country nobility. They had been hoping to cash in on those connections to drum up further business in the face of the war when they broke with their traditional hiring of Kirigakure escorts and instead opted for Konoha escorts while travelling through Fire Country. It was a decision that cost them their lives as Kirigakure were not ones to take a snub, even a logically made one, lying down. They hunted the merchant caravan and set two Chuunin teams with Jounin back-up on them – the single five man chuunin escort was no match for ten chuunin backed up by two jounin. The only survivor of the ambush, Lady Komuro, was rushed back to Konoha, her back flayed open, for urgent medical aid – they couldn't allow a customer to die, especially not one with ties to the Nobility who were providing them with the financial _lifeblood_ they needed in the war. The medical prognosis was grim, her spine was severed, they could stop the bleeding, but everything from her rib-cage down was paralysed, she would have no control over her body functions, her bowel movements, her legs, anything.

Hiruzen may have been Tsunade's teacher, but she was the one who pioneered the field of Medicine within Konoha, he didn't know where Lady Komuro's spinal injuries came into the subject of her pregnancy, but she was advised that in her current state, the baby would die. She demanded they deliver her child, damn whatever happened to her, and they had done so.

Komuro Ietsuna, named for his great grandfather, dear friend to the Honourable Daimyou's forebear, was brought into the world a month early at just under three pounds in weight. His mother lived just long enough to name him, to kiss him goodbye, and request her remains to be sent to her family in the capitol along with those of her husband and their workers – she rejected Water Country, those Kiri Shinobi, and would curse them in death. None of the souls that she held dear would lay to rest within that wretched bloodsoaked land.

Very little of these events were written in the official reports, but the attending medics had certainly remembered the tiny golden eyed woman and her death bed curse. She had possessed a rare force of character that demanded remembrance, it was a shame that her family refused to allow her to become the Kunoichi she confessed to her escorts that she wished to be as a little girl.

He huffed a short sound of mirth as he retook his seat at the foot of her son's bed – it looked as though the lad had inherited none of her personality, but much of her looks. Those same golden eyes, tiny stature, refined bone structure, pale skin, and hair texture.

The russet red colour was from his father's line. The line that was from the outer islands of Water Country, on the borders of Uzushio.

Did the lad perhaps possess some tiny sliver of Uzumaki heritage that drew him to Naruto?

Did it matter if he did?

No.

No it didn't.

But it would wrap his questions up in a nice neat little bow and lay a great deal of his suspicions at rest. He doubted the boy was a threat, almost all of the ANBU that had been rotating out on Naruto's guard detail had expressed that it took time before the child even realised who he was tending to, and once he did..... he didn't stop. He was more hesitant to start, but very quickly after returning ill from the Academy decided to throw his lot in with Naruto and even call out the caretakers of the orphanage while he was at it.

He heard a deep inhale from the lad on the bed, and watched as he cringed in his own bedding and slitted his eyes open, hand coming up to rub at his no doubt aching chest under the covers before he spotted him and froze like a rabbit.

“Are you quite alright?” he asked, fighting a grin as the boy's eyes darted everywhere except his face. “Easy, take a deep breath, we don't want you passing out again. Deep breaths,” he coached. He was a lovely obedient little thing as he did as directed without the twenty questions that O- without demanding to know why as Jiraiya would have, or scoff and try to do something else as Tsunade would have.

His smile was brittle, but that was one of the things about being Hokage, no one really looked too closely at him and if he couldn't fool an Academy Student he would quite literally _eat_ his hat of office.

“U-um,” the boy ventured timidly, “Why....” he trailed off, struggling to find a polite way of asking why he was there, without insinuating that he was unwelcome.

He refrained from laughing at the poor thing, “Am I here? As I said, I think it's past due that you and I had a little chat.” Golden eyes flickered to Naruto and his expression became fearful and apprehensive. It hurt a little, somewhere dull and far away, that any child in Konoha would look at him with that expression after all of his sacrifices, but given how the rest of the village had turned on the lad just because he took a responsibility he never should have been forced to take, he could not blame the child for his anxiety. “Yes, it's about Naruto, and no, you aren't in trouble,” he assured, making the child blush and look down at his hands. He was so easy to read. For one distant moment he was glad that this sweet child had been born here, in Konoha, instead of Kirigakure. They would have destroyed him, if not outright killed him for his nervous disposition and soft heart.

“I actually wanted to thank you,” he admitted, giving no indication as to his grim thoughts of how this soft timid little boy would have met his death a hundred times over had he been born anywhere, and any when, else in this cruel violent world. The child jerked and stared at him with wide golden eyes. “Both myself and the Yondaime truly believed that young Naruto would be viewed as a Hero by the people of the village for saving them from the Kyuubi, but....” he trailed off with a distant, sad look, unwilling to admit to his foolish mistake, that his faith in the _good_ of this village was misplaced when he knew they were good people. Just angry, and hurt, and frightened.

The boy's face soured briefly, “He's not a hero,” he muttered unhappily as he turned his head to glare at the window, “He's a baby. He had no choice. And now he's gotta live with the decisions that other people made for him for the rest of his life. And it isn't fair. They all hate him for the Kyuubi, but he didn't volunteer for this, but he's still suffering for it.”

Sarutobi sighed heavily, “The life of a Shinobi is one of sacrifice,” he lamented wisely.

And received a golden glare from the boy who pushed aside his bedding and crawled over, boldly taking Naruto out of his arm and climbing off the bed, “He isn't a Shinobi,” he pointed out shortly before his face twisted, “But you're not going to give him a choice about that either, are you. Because he's the Container.”

The Academy had ear-marked the lad as fairly bright, they neglected to mention that he was frighteningly perceptive and possessed advanced deductive reasoning.

Hiruzen didn't say anything, he didn't need to, watching as the boy's face crumpled further and his grip shifted on the sleeping baby, hugging him tightly to his chest as if he could protect the infant from his future behind his trembling sleeves. The boy sniffled and bowed his head over the baby before he took a deep breath and turned back towards him, still shaking, eyes never quite rising above his knees as he remained seated on the boy's bed, watching him in tired silence.

“I am sorry for my disrespectful words, Hokage-sama,” the boy managed to say, his voice wobbling and damp with tears that he was very carefully holding back.

“Quite alright, my boy. You have grown protective of Naruto I see, that's good, I'm glad,” he admitted honestly. The Jinchuuriki would _need_ someone in his corner, even if it was just himself and a delicate nerved six year old. “Yoko-san explained that you have taken over Naruto's care, do you understand what that entails?” he asked curiously. The ANBU were certainly under the impression the boy knew what he was doing, definitely more so than they did according to them – but whether that was because none of them wanted to approach the child, or were scared of accidentally harming him, he didn't know and couldn't guess.

Komuro-kun nodded solemnly, “Yes, Hokage-sama. I – I know more about childcare than I do about Ninja-ing, to be honest,” he admitted, hesitantly at first, but then firmly, eyeing him carefully and apparently refusing to be ashamed of this fact even though he had broken out into a sweat.

He forced himself to chuckle, “Then Naruto is in good hands, if the reports from your Academy Instructors are to be believed,” he declared, watching as his eyes went wide and his face bleached even further white.

He swallowed tightly, “Thank you,” he said instead of anything else even as his breathing quickened again. A quick glance down at the child in his arms had him closing his eyes and consciously forcing control over himself, taking deep breaths and counting them before releasing. Good, he would have had to rethink the child's appointment if he passed out while holding Naruto and accidentally crushed him.

And here was the part that he was really here for.

“Officially, the caretaker for Naruto would be Yoko-san of this very orphanage, however, my ANBU have expressed that she is unsuitable to the task, and as you have so diligently taken it up yourself and proved effective, I have made the decision to transfer the role to you, Komuro Ietsuna,” he explained steadily, the boy watching him warily, his pulse fluttering hummingbird quick in the line of his throat, Hiruzen could almost _see_ the handseals running through his head. “There are both benefits and drawbacks to this role. As I'm sure you've already realised, one of the benefits is ANBU protection in public spaces,” he reminded the lad, catching the minute flinch of his head, the slap hadn't been hard enough to bruise, but it had left a large red mark for over a day on the child's pale face. “One of the drawbacks is also that same ANBU protection, there will be no privacy for some years yet. Though I doubt that will be much of a concern for now,” he added with some humour, catching the look of bewilderment on the boy's face, and hearing the faint huff of amusement of Hawk up above.

“I don't mind,” Komuro-kun said quietly, lying through his teeth.

Hiruzen didn't call him on it.

“Despite not yet being a Shinobi, you will be given mission pay for it. No, you are providing a service for the village, and you will be paid for it,” he declared firmly, lifting a hand to silence the child when he opened his mouth to protest, his expression naked with panic. “You will be responsible for Naruto's care, maintaining his dietary needs, his hygiene needs, everything. That is no small task, and it isn't one I would dream of asking of you had I not my own responsibilities to handle.” The Hokage's hat never felt heavier than when he was forced to pick it up again before his _wi-_ before Biwa- before _that night_. If he had not been forced to take these robes up again, he would have taken Naruto's care into his own hands. It might not have been traditional, but he had been just as involved with his children as their mother hand been, as much as he was able to be, and he had loved those early years dearly.

“You will be answerable to me only in the case of Naruto's care, but do expect a great deal of oversight and interest, if not outright interference from others. ANBU will protect you from any physical altercations, and they will report directly to me of any harassment or individuals they feel with less than pure intentions, but they are not infallible. You must exercise your own discretion in the act of protecting him.”

“My own discretion?” Komuro-kun echoed warily.

“Indeed.”

The boy thinned his lips before looking down at the baby, the infant making an odd snuffling noise in his arms.

He looked up, “Th-then, I need help, now.”

That was quick. Hiruzen blinked, bewildered and gestured at him to continue before his nerve failed.

“The Academy. I can't take him with me, and the caretakers don't bother to check in on him while I'm away. I won't ask why ANBU don't, I don't care. But someone has to take care of him while I'm at school! And – and what about when I'm a genin?!” he demanded desperately, gripping the baby tightly, his expression anguished, “I'll have to leave the orphanage and go into housing, and they don't allow babies or children under five! He'll be left here with them, and they don't care! And even if I _got_ permission, what about missions and team-training?! He doesn't even have a blanket! Or clothes, or toys!” the child exclaimed, working himself into tears as he began to hyperventilate again. “I've been using my towel as a sling, but that's bad for him because his neck isn't strong enough yet, and he has nappy rash and there's no medicine and what about when he starts teething and I don't have a dummy and – ”

Hiruzen chuckled, getting to his feet and placing a hand on the boy's shoulder, silencing him before he knelt down and used the sleeve of his robe to dry his cheeks, reminded so intensely of his daughter suddenly and how she would scrunch her nose up in that _exact_ same fashion when he used to do the same to her. “Hawk had already told me about that difficulty. I was going to offer my services as a daytime babysitter. The Academy is in the same building as my office, on the ground floors, you can drop him off before classes and pick him up once you're finished. It wouldn't be the first time I've handed out missions with a baby on my hip, I assure you.

“As for the rest of it, walk with me? We can fix that today, no problem at all.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1/ As of right now, it's been three-four weeks since the Kyuubi attack.
> 
> 2/ “Hiruzen could almost see the handseals running through his head” - since the technology of the Naruto world is kind of topsy turvy and weird, I'm throwing a couple of my own sayings in there that would hopefully make more sense with a ninja culture in mind. Like this one for instance, generally the same as 'see the cogs turning'.
> 
> 3/ I'm not saying Ietsuna is part-Uzumaki, that is just conjecture on behalf of Sarutobi. No one knows if he is or isn't, and it really doesn't matter tbh. It's just flavour text so don't read into it (I have made exactly no plans for Ietsuna's parentage beyond his mother being Fire Country Nobility and his father from a merchant family). On the otherhand, if you want to headcanon that, go ahead? I'm not going to stop you lol
> 
> 4/ Inuzuka Dokuro is an OC, the Inuzuka clan seem to name everyone based on bodyparts, so Dokuro=Skull, appropriate given his hard head. Tsubaki-sensei is also an OC, Tsubaki meaning Camellias, which in japanese flower language means 'Perishing with Grace', appropriate given her death.
> 
> 5/ Funeno-sensei is however a canon character, anime only, but I decided to include him as one of the few named Academy senseis, and the only one I know of that fits the timeline. He was Itachi's sensei, and when Iruka came to teach he was the one that advised him to treat Naruto as an enemy, and then later when Sasuke joined, spent a lot of time trying to smarm his way into Fugaku's goodbooks by praising Itachi and comparing the brothers with Sasuke right there in front of him.


	4. Chapter 4

Naruto had everything he needed now, absolutely everything that Ietsuna could think of, but not everything he would have wanted – much of it hadn't been invented, or even thought of as needed for an infant. He had not allowed the Hokage to take baby Naruto out of his arms, even when they started to go numb until he cycled thin threads of chakra through them. Normally holding Naruto for a long period of time would be no problem, but the Sandaime took him down almost every street in Konoha looking for what he needed – Ietsuna knew _why_ , it was to show him off to all of the merchants, to associate him with the Hokage, so that _everyone_ would know that he had the man's support and faith. He was basically being paraded around so that everyone would know that he had the Hokage's backing.

It made him break out in a cold sweat, but the man paid for everything himself so Ietsuna didn't call him out on it, even though he wanted nothing more than to find somewhere to hide.

Annoyingly, this just made people _saltier_ about him, about Naruto, and their situation. True, no one ever raised their hands to him ever again, but they continued to make their displeasure known in other ways regardless of the Hokage's apparent approval of him. Cold glares, the blatant air of hostility, the wide berth he was given in crowds – as if he carried a disease of some sort. The children in the Academy followed suit with the speed and viciousness of half starved sharks scenting blood in the water, and while his own class was a mixed bag of opinions and confusion given how they had come to notice the _severe_ discrepancy between his actions and how Funeno-sensei treated him, the same could not be said of the children in other classes.

He just wished he wasn't so fucking stupid, that he had the capacity to actually pay attention to the propaganda they were being funnel fed, the lies, without being dragged under by them, because it would be easier to keep track of what he should and shouldn't know.

Because he accidentally blurted out a piece of history that no one should know in the middle of class, and he wasn't sure if anyone had realised, or if the argument that happened afterwards had successfully covered for him.

“KOMURO! NAME THE FOUNDERS OF KONOHA SINCE YOU THINK YOU KNOW ENOUGH TO SLACK OFF!” his teacher had roared across the room, throwing a lump of chalk at him so hard that when he startled out of exhausted daze it missed his face, but only just, and exploded into powder against the wall behind him.

The words tumbled out of his mouth before he could censure himself, “S-Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara came up with the idea for Hidden Villages back when they were pre-teens! I – I don't know which clan _officially_ joined first, but unofficially the majority of the Uchiha Clan broke away from Madara to join the Senju after Uchiha Izuna died! But it could have been the Uzumaki Clan since Shodai-sama married the daughter of the clan head before that, so I don't....” he trailed off from his panicked rambling when he realised the whole room was staring at him, “know...” he finished with a terrified squeak.

There was a long silence before, “It was the Sarutobi Clan who first officially signed papers to join,” a boy from the front row corrected almost kindly.

“The Hyuuga Clan were approached first,” a Branch house girl objected from the otherside of the room, “The negotiations just took longer!”

“Hah! After the Senju it was the Inuzuka who moved in _first_! We were living here before all of you!” a boy with two puppies bragged – and the room devolved into arguing and shouting, and boasts, and Ietsuna sank down in his seat trying to be as small as possible.

Note to self: Never speak. Ever again.

He wasn't able to keep to that, by the time the day ended and he was stepping into a quiet classroom with two chuunin he'd never met before, Senseis of the final years, he had already broken that promise.

“Komuro Ietsuna, here for early graduation examinations, yes?” the Aburame sensei asked quietly.

“Yes sir.”

The man hummed and gestured to the single desk and chair, “Take a seat. Leave your belongings beside the door. You will have one hour to complete your examination paper, after which, you will demonstrate both your wilderness survival skills, trapping, stealth, and Taijutsu outside with myself, and then your Ninjutsu and Genjutsu with Marikawa-sensei.” A small booklet was set in front of him along with an ink pen, “Begin.”

For a child, the questions would probably be difficult, but he did have the mind of a thirty-six year old. He breezed through the exam in short order; once finished, he went through it again, and a third time just to be sure before setting it down along with his pen and nodding to the senseis to show that he was done. As he was the only examinee, they stopped it there at forty minutes before he went outside.

They put him through the wringer of endurance and taijutsu first. Exhausting him completely, and then testing him on trapping, stealth, and survival. And once he'd completed them, he was taken through _another_ Taijutsu test to see how well he performed while running on empty. He was given half an hour to recover before his Ninjutsu and Genjutsu exams began.

He thought it would be simple, demonstrate two Ninjutsu, get a headband – but they took him through more than just that, and even introduced him to the beginning stages of Tree Walking to see if he had any talent in Chakra control. He ended up admitting that he had already mastered the exercise, as well as water walking. Genjutsu was fairly mild, they tested him on his Henge and his Bunshin, they put him under a minor technique to see if he could notice (he did – the feeling of something trying to _squirm_ into his eyes and ears was _traumatic_ and he hadn't realised that he had dispelled the illusion hard enough to crack the floor tiles under his feet with the discharge of chakra until Marikawa-sensei pointed it out).

“Congratulations, graduate,” Aburame-sensei declared once he had finished slapping the feeling of the foreign chakra off his head, shuddering and squirming in disgust much to the amusement of the two Chuunin observers.

Ietsuna froze, and stared at them.

Graduate?

Oh.

He had actually – he knew he _could_ , but he hadn't thought – given the hatred towards Naruto, he expected more of a – well, he expected having to do something ridiculous like the blond had in order to earn his headband. He had been dreading it really, but, oddly, now he felt a little cheated. Weirdly.

Marikawa-sensei giggled, “Come and select your headband, Genin,” she told him with a gesture at the table, at the four headbands they had on offer. Blue, black, red, and green.

He had always liked red.

 

* * *

 

He got his Ninja registration done that afternoon, presented it to the Hokage when he went to collect Naruto, and tried not to hyperventilate when all the attending Chuunin in the mission office stared at him like some kind of alien being as he willingly and happily handled the Jinchuuriki baby.

“Congratulations on becoming a Genin of Konoha, Ietsuna-kun,” the Hokage said kindly, “Your results are quite interesting, tell me, _do_ you possess Chakra Sensory abilities?” he asked curiously.

Ietsuna shrugged, “I don't know, Hokage-sama,” he admitted.

“Humour me, how many people are in the room right now? Can you feel them with your Chakra?” he asked thoughtfully.

Ietsuna shrugged, feeling an ache beginning to form between his shoulderblades as he hunched up around Naruto nervously, he didn't like the attention currently being laid on him, not to mention..... he had never _actively_ tried to find anyone before. He had sensed Kyuubi, but _everyone_ with Chakra awareness could sense _him_. It wasn't that he knew the ANBU were in the room, okay that was a lie, they were in the room but that was just _common sense_. Right? There was always going to be bodyguards around the Hokage, even though he was the strongest in the village and the ANBU were just.... more likely to get in his way if a fight broke out....

He chewed his lower lip and eyed the old man beneath his lashes, were there ANBU in the room? For Naruto? Or had they been assigned to Ietsuna while Naruto was protected by the old man? Did it matter?

“Ietsuna-kun?” the old man prompted gently, and he squirmed.

How did he describe a colour to a man who couldn't see? How did one describe sound to someone without ears? How did you describe scents to someone who didn't perceive them like you? It was like.... the feel of his own Chakra was so overwhelming and alien sometimes that he actively tired to ignore everything around him, the white noise, the rushing sounds, smells, and colours around him, the overwhelming cacophony that would suck him in if only he looked up to see it.

Tentatively, it wasn't that he _reached_ for the feeling, but more that he stopped holding it so tightly, like.... like he focused his eyes from his phone to his lap where Naruto was waiting. A blinding supernova. Sunlight a newborn nebula within his arms. Content and settled, he was warm, he was clean, he was fed and burped and held by his favourite person. He slept on, undisturbed, and comfortable. He looked at the floor, and traced his attention towards the desk, to the brightest point in the room, to the Hokage.

Oh.

Ietsuna had forgotten. His wife had been there when Naruto was born, and Obito had killed her. That explained the _pain-sadness-grief-loss-guilt-anger_ all tangled up amidst the earth-stone-shelter of his Chakra. The Chuunin were so dim by comparison to Naruto and the Sandaime he almost couldn't see them, but they were there; Dismissive-frustrated- _enoughwiththebabywhataboutyourworkHokage-sama?_ -fire-papers-ink-everything in its place and a place for everything-order amidst chaos on the left, Disgust-fear- _youtouchthatthingwithyourbarehands_ -log fires-long nights-too sharp teeth in a too wide smile-make you scream as you bleed-mine-mine- _ **m i n e**_ –

He jerked away from the Chuunin on the right, recoiling fearfully, and leaned towards where he could feel familiar High-bright- _interesting_ -ice water-frost on spiderwebs-fierocity-hang you with your own stupidity-barely leashed-threat-threat- _threat_ -b u t   n o t   t o   y o u 

He gasped for air, dizzy as he felt him move behind him, felt the Quiet-Storm- _wouldyoustopembarrassingme_ -patience faked eventually gained, Loud-Home- _I'minchargehereknowyourplace!_ -run with the wolves-howl with all your soul-taste the blood of your enemies, Many in One-bored- _arguingispointlessyoushouldstopantagonisingeachother_ -industry-action-always something to do-protect the hive-one for all, Lonely- _StopgettinginmyfaceIknowwhatI'mdoing_ -insecurity-bird without a flock-wolf without a pack-three legged stool-want more-head down-move forward- don't stop never stop –

“Ietsuna-kun!”

He choked, squeezing his eyes shut and curling over Naruto as if struck, which he may as well have been for how his head now hurt. He whimpered.

“Th-there's four in here, and three outside,” he managed to get out as he crouched, arms wrapped tightly around Naruto and trying to turn his focus inward, to look back at himself and notice only himself but he _couldn't_ there was too much going on around him. He could feel High-Bright-Frost on Spiderwebs behind him, a hot hand pressing between his shoulderblades and a quiet voice murmuring into the shell of his ear.

“Focus on me,” the man commanded softly, Ietsuna gasped for air he just couldn't seem to get, his stomach clenching.

He yelped, alarmed as his ear was harshly twisted, “ _Focus on me_ ,” the Hawk masked ANBU commanded sharply, and Ietsuna was certain somewhere in the back of his head he had stopped breathing as he stared at the mask in mute terror. “Good. Pay attention to me, use your words, tell me what you feel.” The child shook his head mutely, how did he describe something he had no _words for?!_ His ear was pinched again, “It wasn't a request. Words.”

Ietsuna whined, tilting his head painfully towards the ANBU's hand, “I-ice water, high-bright, barely leashed, frost covered spiderwebs, white and pale blue, wind-chimes in winter, d-dancing on rivers in the rain,” he babbled throwing everything he could describe at him, the things that popped into his head, the feelings that _matched_.

Hawk hummed, “My Chakra affinities _are_ wind and water,” he admitted lazily, “I'm not sure how the rest of it correlates,” he mused thoughtfully before he made a handseal and Ietsuna's ear went warm and the stinging pain was rushed away in _renew-repair-mint_.

Medical Chakra?

“Thank you Hawk,” the Sandaime interrupted, a small twitch of his hand signalling the ANBU to leave. There was a pause before the shinobi did as he was told, bowing to his Kage before vanishing with a furry of leaves – but not going far, settling once again into the rafters, his presence now as noticeable _as_ a spider's web, as a cool draft, one that Ietsuna could only feel because he _knew_ it now. However, instead of looking annoyed, the old man looked pleased, he _was_ pleased, it radiated from his Chakra next to the tangled mess of pain, it felt like a glimmer of something growing within the cracks of him. “Well, well, well, it has been a while since Konoha has had a _natural_ Chakra sensor. I look forward to seeing where you take that ability, Ietsuna-kun, I know you'll do us proud.”

He trembled and nodded, feeling cold through to his bones and sick with fear as he mumbled something he didn't even hear and quickly escaped the room, feeling a cold sweat beginning to itch his hairline as he raced home.

 _I know you'll do us proud. I know you'll do us proud_. _I know you'll do us proud_.

_I   k n o w   y o u ' l l   d o   u s   p r o u d ._

He needed to escape. He needed to leave. He couldn't stay in Konoha. He _couldn't_ , it would kill him, the Hokage gave him his personal attention, the Hokage had _expectations_ for him, would be _watching_ him. He needed to get out. He needed to leave. He had to go. Go now. Go now-now-now.

He stared at his room, now more Naruto's, blind and hardly seeing it as his skin _crawled_ with awareness, with the Spider Webs in the ceiling, with the Tired-Pleased-Nurture-Give of the caretakers, with the many outside his doors, with the quiet thrum beneath his feet, a distant breath of wind.

He put the baby in his crib. And he crawled back into his closet to cry.

He couldn't leave.

 

* * *

 

“Genin Komuro Ietsuna?” a dull voiced Nara Jounin asked, slouching over from the Mission office staircase to the left of the Academy doors. No doubt he had been upstairs getting a briefing from the Sandaime about him.

He had been sat on the swings, swallowing back vinegary saliva and telling himself over and over that he couldn't mess this up. “Y-yes,” he confirmed, jumping to his feet, fidgeting with his sleeves. He didn't know if he would be expected to do a Genin exam like they did in the manga, or if that was something that only unestablished teams had to do, but either way, he had dressed and packed for it regardless.

He needed to go far and go quickly so that he could get out on a semi-dangerous C-rank and vanish like he intended to before hand. Naruto would grow up fine, Ietsuna had gotten him all the stuff he needed, he had even talked the Hokage into looking after him, and his ANBU guards had started doing little things to help him, making sure that nappies and wipes were laid out for his use while his back was turned getting him out of the crib, making sure the milk was at the right temperature and ready without his having to leave his room to fetch it. Little things that made life _so_ much easier. Naruto would grow up better than before, but still have the background he needed to reach out to both Sasuke and Gaara, to Nagato, and Obito. He realised he had been stupid and selfish, and that his belief in his own morals had put everyone else in danger. He wasn't being righteous in interfering, he was being an arrogant selfish brat – he was putting an entire world at risk because he thought he knew better. He didn't have the right to decide the fates of literally thousands of other human beings. So, his original plan was back in motion.

Get team, get good, get out, fake death, run as far and as fast as he could to _anywhere_ else, hide, survive, wait it out.

It would be fine. It would work.

“Troublesome,” the Jounin complained, “I can hear you thinking, stop, I'm getting tired just watching you,” he complained grumpily making him twitch and force his hands to still.

“S-sorry Sensei,” he squeaked.

The man sighed again, “Just Shikaru is fine. I'm not exactly your sensei yet.” His heart sank, oh no, he _was_ going to have to do something like the bell test! “I'm as new to this team as you, so let's go meet the rest of them. They should be at training ground five,” he explained rummaging in one of his flack-vest pockets for something, something that ended up being a sweet that he flicked in Ietsuna's direction before taking one for himself. “C'mon.”

He caught the sweet, but it was a near thing as he had been too busy staring at the man whose chakra signature felt like a living black-velvet cloak, soft and warm, protective, obscuring, but suffocating, entrapping, _strangling_ , if he so chose to be.

He popped the sweet in his mouth and twitched a little in surprise as the taste of peppermint filled his mouth. He had noticed that a lot of people scorned menthol flavours, and remembered reading that people in Japan didn't like the mint-flavour because it reminded them of toothpaste. Considering how much he had loved peppermint tea, it felt like a strange betrayal from a place that he had admired so much. So this? This was surprising, but _so nice_. He sucked happily on his little sweet and chased after his meandering sensei as the man stalked through the streets of Konoha, hands tucked into his pockets.

Nara Shikaru didn't look that old, all things considered, he was probably in his early twenties, with classically Nara features and skin tone. He wore regular Jounin fatigues, none of the typical fishnets Ietsuna recalled seeing on Shikamaru and his father Shikaku were there, he had instead opted for black wraps around his forearms and shins. He was taller and lankier than most of his clans'men, his hair was a lot longer and braided into five tails gathered into a single band at the back of his head, each one of those braids was clipped into a metal loop capped with a _spike_ of matt-black coloured metal. He stared at the spikes with sudden clarity that if you had the Chakra control to create threads out of chakra charged _absence of light_ then you probably had it to turn your hair into the extra hands you needed to wield as many knives as you wished. He apparently _also_ had a sweet-tooth and shared Ietsuna's appreciation of mints, as a second one was passed his way with a glance of amusement.

This.... was possibly the first shinobi he felt comfortable opening his mouth around, which was dangerous, he'd have to be careful, but he was curious and comfortable enough to ask, “You said you were new too, what do you mean?” he asked, trotting at the Jounin's elbow, for once glad of everyone else's habit of giving him a wide berth on the streets because it meant he wasn't in danger of being knocked into.

Shikaru-sensei shrugged a shoulder, “These two've been without sensei and teammate for a while now. They lost their teammate in the war, their sensei to Battle Fatigue more recently. They've had people to try and fill the roles but no one could keep up with them. Not many shinobi like working with the Uchiha, and very few can keep up with an Uchiha _and_ an Inuzuka,” the man explained lazily as they turned off towards the training ground ring, the road that circled the village and lead into every single training ground the village boasted.

Ietsuna swallowed nervously, an Uchiha teammate? He hoped they hadn't activated their Sharingan, though the chances were slim if they'd been in the war, he'd have to be _very_ careful about his escape. And an _Inuzuka?_ If he didn't know better he'd have thought the Hokage was doing this on _purpose_ to thwart his escape attempts! It was almost the two _worst_ Clans to be on a team with when attempting to do a runner.

“Here we are. Team Five! Front and centre!” Shikaru called, not bothering to raise his voice, but with a little chakra manipulation that he could feel rippling through the air like fluttering moths it reached every corner of the training ground.

A girl's voice was raised from somewhere in the treeline and a split second later there was a massive _crash_ and a pair of dogs came racing out from the undergrowth, caked in mud, tongues lolling in doggish amusement as a ten year old girl burst out in their wake. She hit the ground at a run, laughing as she went, and staggered to a stop in front of them, head bowed, hands braced on her knees as she wheezed and got her breath back before straightening and grinning at them from her dirty face.

“Mornin'! Inuzukas Ashi, Migi, and Hidari, reporting in, Sir!” she shouted happily.

She was... very classically Inuzuka. Wild brown hair that was more spike than hair, gathered into a gravity defying ponytail at the back of her head, thin almost slit black eyes, her red tattooed cheeks, sharp toothed grin, her rough hands and practical fur-lined clothes. Her two dogs, identical no-longer-puppies-but-not-quite-dogs-either in shades of black, brown, tan, and white. He stared a little because they looked like a mix between german shepards, huskies, and australian kelpies on steroids because they were already the size of a regular shepard, and judging by the size of their paws they had an _awful_ lot more growing left to do.

Shikaru grimaced a little, “Sure, whatever, where's the Uchiha?” he asked bluntly.

She grinned toothily, “Oh he's a little tied up right now. He'll be here – ”

There was a flurry of leaves and a furious snarl, “ _Ashi!_ ”

“ – right about now. Meet our new teammates Shisui!” the girl exclaimed gleefully as she caught the six-seven year old boy in a head lock before he could punch her in the kidney and gestured to them.

Uchiha Shisui blinked, staring at him, and Ietsuna felt his stomach drop down to his knees.

“You're Vomit-Komuro!”

 

* * *

 

[Fanart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16546202/chapters/38764376?show_comments=true&view_full_work=false#comment_192704432) by [DeathLadyShinigami](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeathLadyShinigami/pseuds/DeathLadyShinigami)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nice Shisui. Very nice.
> 
> Ashi- in keeping with Inuzuka tradition, she is named 'Foot'. Her dogs, Migi and Hidari, are named 'Right' and 'Left', because they have a TERRIBLE sense of humour, and so do I lol.  
> Shikaru has no meaning as far as I'm aware, unless you count the fact that Shika means Deer, and you add -ru at the end of dictionary definitions. So he's basically the dictionary definition of a deer lol.
> 
> Oh! Did you see? Did you see?! I got FANART! Eeee~  
> 


	5. Chapter 5

He – he had no words for that. His mouth dropped open in disbelief as Shisui immediately went red and slapped both of his hands over his mouth in horror as the older girl burst out laughing at the looks on their faces. Even Shikaru-sensei snorted a little in amusement, eyeing the pair of them.

“I'm so sorry, Komuro-kun,” Shisui whispered shamefaced.

“H-he doesn't _smell_ like vomit!” the older girl managed to wheeze out through her laughter before calming down, snickering a little, “Just baby powder and fear, a lotta fear,” she added a little more seriously, frowning at him in obvious concern.

Shisui shook his head, still blushing in embarrassment, “No, no – he used to throw up a lot in the Academy, so that was what everyone called him. I really am sorry, Komuro-kun, I shouldn't have said that. I'm glad you're better now though,” he added a little more brightly, sounding genuinely pleased at the apparent improvement to Ietsuna's health. The new Genin nodded jerkily, swallowing back the sting of indignation and offence in favour of feeling suddenly sick to his stomach as the implications of his new team dynamic settled into his mind. Part of him wanted to give the Sandaime the benefit of the doubt, after all, he and Shisui had been in the same class, they were the same age, it was _logical_ to put him on the Uchiha's team since there was a slot open instead of any _other_ team which would be comprised of much older genin who did not know him. The other part of him, the embittered adult who viewed this world and everything in it with the same degree of paranoid suspicion as Mad-Eye Moody did his own pointed out that he was in a team with a boy that would redefine what it meant to use the Shunshin no Jutsu and become known as the _fastest Uchiha_ before his death, an Inuzuka, and a Nara. A Nara who made _Jounin_. Instead of deciding that Chuunin was good enough and that a higher rank would be troublesome. A motivated Nara, how terrifying.

How _utterly_ terrifying, he decided, feeling queasy again all of a sudden as he shifted ever so slightly behind Shikaru-sensei, trying to slide out from under the man's lazy amusement. “It's okay,” he mumbled awkwardly, not looking at the suddenly stricken looking Uchiha.

“If we're all done?” Shikaru-sensei interrupted before anything further could be said, “How about we set aside everything we _thought_ we knew about each other and start again with a slightly more professional introduction?” he suggested pointedly with a a twist of his lips as he looked at Shisui.

Ashi grinned, “Sure! And don't worry, we don't bite friends or teammates outside of pre-approved sparring matches,” the Inuzuka girl announced, hand raised and her tone taking on that strange almost quoting chant that put Ietsuna in mind of American Summer Camp mottos.

“Good to know, I'm not into that sort of thing,” Shikaru-sensei quipped lazily. The other two didn't get it, Ietsuna gave himself away by snorting only to immediately clamp both hands over his traitorous moth and nose, and slowly peering up at his sensei with wide golden eyes in horror. If he were even _five_ years older it wouldn't be a big deal, but a _six year old_ snorting at a dirty innuendo he shouldn't understand was a very different beast to a pre-teen doing so on a subject they were beginning to gain an interest and passing familiarity with.

Ashi and Shisui looked between them in confusion as Shikaru-sensei's face spasmed comically as he stared down at his youngest student, and then apparently decided it was too troublesome to deal with and it was better to pretend nothing happened – to Ietsuna's great relief.

He turned away to address the other two, letting the red head relax, “I am Jounin Nara Shikaru, I'm eighteen, you'll be my first team, so let's get along. It'll be troublesome otherwise. My specialisations are heavy combat, tactics, and assassination. My dislikes are troublesome, my likes are _also_ troublesome but in a good way. Ambitions are too much effort, and it's troublesome to have expectations,” he complained lazily with a shrug. Ietsuna pulled a face in agreement, what a fucking mood. Being in his late-teens during the bank crash was terrifying as far as he was concerned because there went his fucking future, right along side the economy.

The kunoichi scoffed indignantly, “All you told us were your specialities! Everything else was just 'troublesome'!” she complained.

“Not true,” he protested mildly, a shit eating grin spreading across his face, “I told you my name too.” Ashi made a sound not unlike a teakettle while her dogs barked, she shot them looks of betrayal before folding her arms and scowling at him. He grinned at her, “Would you care to show me how it's done?” he asked almost sarcastically, she of course didn't notice or care as Inuzuka were wont to do.

“Damn straight!” she shouted, “Inuzuka Ashi! This is Migi, forward combat master, and Hidari, tracker extraordinaire! All three of us are combat, and tracking specialists. I'm also kinda okay with medical ninjutsu, I can do minor injuries, but not broken bones yet,” she explained with a wrinkled nose before thumping her chest, “I'll get better at it, my chakra system is still growing so I just gotta keep on top of my chakra control training! I like training, my clan, bugs, and weapons! I don't like air-poison, genjutsu, or _animal abusers_!” she snarled, her hair practically puffing up into livid spikes as her chakra flared Aggressive-Wild-Teeth in Throat-Blood Thirst-Protect Them. “I don't really have a goal or an ambition to be honest. I want to do my clan proud, of course, and I wanna be useful to Konoha, but other than that....” she shrugged carelessly and Ietsuna fought not to flinch. Looked like the indoctrination had been effective on her at least.

Shikaru-sensei nodded in a 'fair enough' kind of way, “Your turn, Uchiha,” the teenager declared, looking at the black haired boy who was trying to crane his head and see the other six year old practically hiding behind him.

Shisui straightened up and grinned at him, “Uchiha Shisui, sir. I'm a genjutsu, tracking, and ninjutsu specialist. I'm also training up my weapons handling abilities with my dad's tanto,” he explained as he reached over his shoulder to tap the sheathed weapon across his back. “I like my family, fireworks, training, and showing my cousins kunai tricks. I'm not too fond of cave systems, there were a few uh... well, Iwa, I'm sure you know,” he added with a grimace, “I want to be a splendid Shinobi of Konoha, and protect the village,” he finished with a pleased chirp.

“And now you, Red,” Shikaru announced, hand snaking around behind his back and scruffing Ietsuna by his clothes and hoisting him out from his hiding place.

He squeaked a little bit under the scrutiny of his teammates.

“Don't be scared,” Shisui tried to sooth, his voice gentling as though he were trying to calm an animal.

He grimaced, cringing in his clothing, “K-Komuro Ietsuna. I'm six. I don't... have... a speciality... yet,” he admitted slowly, glancing sideways anxiously, “I'm good at Chakra control, and... I'm – I'm a ch-chakra sensor,” he trailed off almost silently, twisting Tsubaki-sensei's gloves harshly, “And I'm – developing my own Taijutsu style.... in conjunction with elemental manipulation. I like.... my brother,” it was safe to call Naruto his brother, right? It would be easier to explain their relationship and his responsibility to him as that than anything else, “I dislike people that... don't understand Fuuinjutsu basics. I – want to live. Long enough to retire. And find somewhere quiet and peaceful,” he finished in barely a whisper.

“I didn't know you had a brother!” Shisui exclaimed excitedly as Shikaru-sensei rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “How old is he? Ashi said you smelt like baby powder, he must be young!”

Was he even allowed to tell? He looked up at Shikaru-sensei in mild panic, and the man gave him a long level look. The same one that Amy used to give him when he didn't want to do something he really should and she wasn't about to do it for him, complete with raised eyebrow.

His stomach clenched but, he scowled at the Uchiha, making him jerk a little as his smile dropped in confusion, “He's the Container.”

Shisui's mouth dropped open, and even Ashi and her puppies froze to stare at him, Ietsuna bit his lower lip hard and glared at them for all he was worth, “If that's a problem for you, I'll leave,” he snapped forcefully, hands fisting hard enough for his nails to bite into the skin of his palm.

The Uchiha's smile was weak, and a little shaky, “Somehow I don't think sealing a Bijuu is a Fuuinjutsu basic,” he pointed out a little disbelievingly.

“I thought the Fourth just turned the fox _into_ a human!” Ashi exclaimed in shock, “It's actually a kid?!” Her puppies barked loudly immediately rushing over to start sniffing curiously at him.

Ietsuna threw her a withering look, “No Fuuinjutsu in the world could make that kind of change. Naruto was born a normal human baby like everyone else until the Fourth forced him to be the Container.” He then glared at Shisui, “Storage scrolls and kunai, it's the same principle. You're not going to throw a scroll at someone and expect it to _cut_ them, are you?” he sneered.

Dark eyed blinked rapidly at him before the Uchiha started to laugh, weirdly bright and happy, “Wow, Komuro-kun! You really _do_ have a spine!”

Wait, what?

“You can't be serious, Shi,” Ashi objected, eyeing him warily, “He's _taking care_ of the thing that destroyed half the village!”

“I'M TAKING CARE OF A DAMN BABY!” Ietsuna whipped around and snarled at her, suddenly enough that her puppies jumped away from him with yelps of alarm. “YOU WANT TO HATE SOMEONE FOR TRASHING THE VILLAGE, HOW ABOUT THE PERSON THAT RIPPED IT OUT OF THE PREVIOUS CONTAINER INSTEAD!”

A hand landed on his head, “That – is classified information, Komuro-kun,” Shikaru-sensei told him very mildly, “How did you come by it?"

Ietsuna scowled up at him, “It doesn't take a genius to figure out. We've _always_ had the Kyuubi. For it to appear in the middle of the village someone had to have killed the previous container.” Under normal circumstances that would be the case, but Uzumaki Kushina had actually _survived_ the extraction, _and_ right in the aftermath of a traumatic childbirth. She was the one in a millionth exception, and even for an Uzumaki such a feat would have been considered impossible.

“Wait, wait, we've _always_ had Kyuubi?! The hell!” Ashi squawked, puppies barking at her feet.

Shikaru-sensei groaned, “Kami give me strength,” he groaned, and then chopped the top of Ietsuna's head, making him yelp in pain and drop, crouching down and clutching at his head. “And here I thought _you'd_ be the least troublesome one here,” he complained down at the six year old who whined, furiously rubbing at his stinging head. “Yes, Ashi-kun, Konoha has always had the Container of the Kyuubi no Kitsune. We just never _advertised_ the fact.”

Ietsuna grimaced, advertised? No. They didn't _need_ to advertise the fact that they still had the Kyuubi Jinchuuriki. No country could forget it since they obsessively kept track of _which_ tailed beasts that Hashirama doled out, and they _all_ noticed that he made a point of keeping hold of the very tailed beast his so called bestfriend brought against him during the cataclysmic battle that killed him. They weren't stupid, they knew Hashirama had sealed the Kyuubi, that was _where_ he got the idea to pass them out like fucking party favours. Kami, poor Kurama. Enslaved by the reincarnation of one brother, and then forced to watch as the other reincarnated sibling kills him, and enslaves the others, treating them as _things_ and _weapons_ instead of his siblings. That – was probably a source of anger for him. Never mind that Naruto was the reincarnation of the very brother that locked him into the prison of his wife's body.

“No one truly knows what happened the night the Kyuubi was released, but Ietsuna-kun is quite correct in pointing out that Uzumaki Naruto was a perfectly normal baby the moment he was born. No demon fox, no seals, nothing. He was _exactly_ the same as all three of you at the moment of his birth,” Shikaru-sensei continued firmly, staring the young Inuzuka girl down sternly as she shuffled, “Naruto was simply the closest infant to the Fourth at the time. Had he been in the Uchiha estate, it would be very likely he would choose one of their children. As I understand it, the Lady Mikoto was a very dear friend of the Fourth, and she has recently given birth. It could have been her son that held the Kyuubi. It could have been any _one_ of the current Clan Heirs who held the Kyuubi. All of whom are infants at the moment. It could even be _your_ Clan Heir, Ashi-kun. Kiba, isn't it?” he asked mildly, watching as she blanched in horror as the implications finally, completely, sank in.

“ _Any_ baby could have that thing sealed inside of them? How are we supposed to know?! Wait, you said we've always had it, that – this has been happening for years?!” she shrieked, making the three boys wince a little.

Shikaru-sensei nodded, “Yeeep,” he agreed, popping the 'p' in the word, “Both the Fourth and the Third wished for the Container to be viewed as a hero in the village for sacrificing his future and body to protect all of you. Of course, people are scared, so that didn't happen. Ietsuna-kun here has been Naruto's _only_ real caretaker since that night, since apparently he's one of the few people in the village with the ability to differentiate a kunai from a storage scroll,” the teenager said with a sideways look down at the six year old who hunched his shoulders and started fiddling with his gloves again. “Now, if we've finished discussing classified information that none of you should actually _know_ about, but one of you is apparently too smart for his own good, shall we get on with what we're actually here for?” he suggested blandly.

Ashi flushed, “Sorry sensei. And.... sorry Komuro-kun.”

 

* * *

 

“I'm impressed, Komuro-kun,” Shisui said later in the day as they worked on a basic D-rank to clean one of the training grounds of discarded or lost weaponry and traps. The Uchiha grinned at him as he looked up from the tree branches he was carefully untangling a semi-rusted length of wire from, “You're a lot braver than I thought you were,” the dark eyed boy said kindly.

This had better not be about taking in Naruto...

Ietsuna frowned at him, “What do you mean?” he asked suspiciously, narrowing his eyes.

Shisui laughed, lifting his hands defensively, “I don't think I've ever heard you raise your voice, or get angry.” The red head scowled and turned away from him, that did not answer his question, and it wasn't an explanation. He went back to roughly hacking down the rusted wire, carefully picking it out of the tree-bark it had bitten into. It was important to do maintenance checks like this fairly often, especially for ninja wire and kunai in the trees on the run up to the dry-season. True, it was only December, and there was no chance of forest fires right now, but that didn't mean that a Lightning Jutsu going off target because it was more attracted to the metal on the tree couldn't do something dangerous – like explode and potentially kill anyone nearby.

“Uhm....” the Uchiha trailed off as his new teammate went back to work with a scowl. This... was harder than he thought it would be. He had never paid overly much attention to Komuro back in the Academy beyond thinking that he had interesting colours, rusty red hair and polished gold eyes was a super weird combo, it made him wonder what clan he came from but, of course, he lived in the orphanage so there was clearly no one else there. He was also really weird. It was a little inspiring, how hard he trained, but he was always sweating, even in class, and he was prone to throwing up, so he kinda smelt bad a lot, and no matter how much Shisui wanted to see how his Taijutsu measured up, he also didn't want to get close enough to touch the other kid. What was he even scared of? Surely if he didn't want to become a Shinobi he could just resign, right? Why go through with all the time and effort if you were terrified to the point of throwing up almost every day? That couldn't be healthy. Yeah, they were at war at the time, but surely he would be more of a hindrance on the battlefield than a help with that kind of constitution?

But still, it was shocking that he had managed to swing an early graduation _outside_ a time of war! That meant he had to be skilled, and looking at him now Shisui could see it. He was very balanced, and light footed. But he was a very different personality from what he remembered, and now he... didn't quite know how to make friends with him? He was _trying!_ But Komuro-kun didn't seem to want to know?

There was a crack somewhere overheard, and Komuro yelped as the wires snapped.

They moved at the same time.

“Look out!” Komuro yelled, throwing himself off the tree at Shisui as the half-rusted trap sprung and sent a huge log covered in kunai and smudged explosive tags swung towards them.

He met the red head halfway through the air and surged his chakra, Shunshin-ing to the otherside of the clearing, the two of them skidding to their feet. The log crashed into the ground hard enough to trigger two more traps, shuriken went flying, and several thin branches whipped through the air where they had been working previously, doing little more than menacing the air as the two watched from fifty feet away.

That was exciting.

“You okay?” Shisui asked, turning to look at the red head as he cradled his fingers.

He looked up from his hand, eyes wide, almost glowing in the shadow of the tree overhead, “I might need a medic nin,” he admitted, his voice shaky as he held his fingers in a white knuckled grip, the tiny digits peeking out from thick black fingerless leather _dripping_ with blood, cut through to the bone.

The wire. It snapped and must have sliced through Komuro's fingers when it did so.

“Let me see.”

Shisui jumped _out of his skin_ , whipping around and reaching for a kunai before the ANBU that appeared from literally _nowhere_ flicked him in the forehead and turned his full attention back to Komuro. The red head didn't even hesitate before he was showing the hawk masked man his bleeding hand. The ANBU hummed before, without even any _handseals_ , he called up medical chakra and began to seal the damage.

“You still need to see a medic,” the ANBU announced before the creepy white and blue masked rolled to look at Shisui who tensed up, deeply uncomfortable under the scrutiny of what was _obviously_ an _Elite_ Jounin level shinobi. Even within spitting distance of the man he couldn't see anything identifying, his head was tucked up under his hooded coat, and he couldn't see a damn thing through the eye-slits of his mask, he couldn't even _hear_ the man breathing. Creepy. He had never been so relieved as when the ANBU turned back to Komuro, who apparently had bigger balls than Shisui had ever given him credit for because he didn't even _blink_ at the stare he received, “Trust worthy?” the ANBU asked.

Shisui felt a hand close on his stomach and squeeze. What?

“Yes. Very,” the red head stated firmly, not even looking at Shisui.

Hawk nodded and then in a single smooth gesture, caught Shisui by the back of his neck and propelled him to Komuro's side, “Take him to the hospital. I'll inform Nara-san and catch up. No detours,” he commanded, holding a finger out at Komuro's nose who scowled at him.

He didn't say anything, but the bitchy expression that twisted his features was telling enough. The ANBU made a soft noise that took Shisui a moment to realise was actually a _laugh_ before he vanished in the smoothest fucking shunshin he had ever seen before in his _life_. How – how did he _do_ that?!

“What – was – that?” Shisui squeaked as Komuro turned away and began to jog back towards the ring-road that lead them into the village.

He glanced back at him in confusion, “That was Hawk. You've seen ANBU before, right?”

“ _Yes I've seen ANBU before,_ ” Shisui hissed as he bounded across the short distance separating them and catching the red head's arm, “Why is he _here_? ANBU don't bother with genin, ever!”

“He's to stop people from attacking me,” the red head stated looking away before prying Shisui's hand off his arm, “They can't take their anger out on Naruto, so they go for the next best thing,” he muttered before continuing to run.

Shisui stared after him for a moment before it sank in. People.... were attacking him for being the Container's carer because they couldn't attack the baby directly, and it was apparently enough that he _needed_ an ANBU protector while in his own village?

He chased after his teammate, hand dropping to his kunai pouch as they reached the ring-road. The red head turned his head to catch sight of him and then looked past him before continuing on, nothing said.

Would people have attacked _Itachi_ or _Mikoto_ if Sasuke really _had_ been chosen to be the Container?

Running through the village, he realised it almost immediately. Yes. Yes they would have, because even with an obvious member of the Uchiha clan running with him, people still glared at Komuro, shifted out of his way, dragging their children back. There was _Killing Intent_ being directed at the other boy. The trip to the hospital was quiet, but by the time they were coming up to the doors, Shisui felt sick to his stomach as he followed after his teammate as he veered away from the receptionist desk and made his way directly into the minor injuries clinic.

The clinic wasn't anything grand, just a large almost office-like space with many various cubicles and a line of chairs that people perched in, holding various wounds and injuries while waiting for their turn to be seen to by a medic. The line moved fast, a boy with a kunai lodged in his foot needed to be carried by his teammate as the two hopped after their attending medic who watched with the dead eyes of someone who had probably seen this exact scene _multiple_ times in a day.

They joined the back of the eight person line and barely had to wait fifteen minutes before they were called in, their medic being a dull eyed black haired man in white who didn't even wait for Komuro to sit down before he was demanding to see the injury. Shisui had never had to go to the clinic before, his clan had plenty of kunoichi who had copied a medic ninjutsu back in the day and were happy to pass the skill on to whomever cared to learn, then there was the war when the most he saw were the medical tents, and occasionally had Ashi deal with the minor injuries as they ran through the forests, trusting Migi and Hidari to lead them in the right direction and warn them of any ambushers. So this? This was a new experience.

Komuro didn't even bat an eyelid as he presented his hand to the medic and informed him that preliminary care had already been done, but he still needed it checked. Hawk had only sealed the wound, he hadn't healed it, and Komuro's fingers were swollen black with bruising.

The medic didn't even give them a name to call him as he tutted, and ran through the handseals for the medical ninjutsu (Shisui made sure to have his Sharingan on to watch as the man carefully fed chakra onto the cuts, putting to right the broken blood vessels, the sliced open tendons, even the cracked finger bone was put to rights – Shisui did not have the chakra control to perform the technique to that level, not at all), and almost immediately Komuro's hand looked a hundred times better than it did.

The red head signed a few papers, and they left.

In total, they spent more time waiting on the uncomfortable wooden chairs than they did being seen to by the medic, and were in and out of the hospital within twenty minutes.

Then they went back to the training ground to finish their mission.

 

* * *

 

“Do you guys wanna come over to mine for dinner tonight?” Ashi asked brightly as they handed over the last sack of reclaimed metal to the smithing quarter of the artisan district. “Your brother is welcome too, Tsu-chan,” the girl added earnestly as she looked at him, “I was wrong about how I acted earlier. You're my teammate, pack, that means your brother is my brother too.”

Ietsuna 'um'ed uncertainly. Of everyone he expected trouble from regarding Naruto, the Inuzuka were second from the bottom – the Aburame being at the very bottom of the list because they too knew what it was like to be hated for what they held. And since the Inuzuka partnered with them more often than not, they would share the same view point. The older ones anyway.

He looked over to where Hawk was hiding and felt a flicker of amusement in his chakra and a very pointed sense of approval, so it must have been alright?

A meal that he hadn't had to make himself was a rare treat these days. The caretakers seemed to have decided that since Ietsuna had thrown his lot in with Naruto that he was no longer their responsibility and had stopped making sure there was a plate for him at meal times, and with his training schedule, he often wasn't there for meal times anyway. But a meal in an unknown place with unknown people, even if they _were_ supposed to be his team – he didn't want to get too close to them, he would have to leave them in the end, eventually, as soon as he figured out a way to do so successfully. He had reacted without thinking earlier, and he had been kicking himself for it since, reminding himself forcefully that he was _leaving_. His reaction and protectiveness over Naruto was.... fine, it was permissible, explainable, it would cover him much more effectively if everyone thought he was too protective of him to willingly leave the village, they would think he really _had_ died when he put his plans into action. But getting too close to his teammates? Especially when he _knew_ Shisui wouldn't survive the next ten years?

He didn't like pain.

And he got attached easy.

He didn't want to get too close, it would hurt when he left.

Shisui grinned at him, “C'mon, Komuro-kun, despite how she looks Ashi's actually a really good cook!” he promised with a laugh as she coloured and glared at him.

“' _Despite how I look_ '?! And what's that supposed to mean, you twerp?” she demanded raising a fist, he laughed ducking away from her and hiding behind Ietsuna, making her scowl and huff.

“Uhm, I'd need to pick him up, and get another bottle, but okay,” the red head found himself saying instead of the polite refusal he planned, and felt all the blood drain out of his face at what had just come out of his traitorous little mouth.

Ashi cheered, bouncing up and down, “Awesome! Are there any foods I should avoid? Y'know, allergies and hatreds.”

He swallowed shakily, “I'm... I don't like nattou.”

“No one likes nattou, 'cept that weirdo,” Ashi stated with a face as she nodded to the highly offended Shisui.

“It's good for you!” he protested hotly.

“It's gross, is what it is! How you can eat something that smells and _tastes_ like mould I don't understand but keep that stuff _away_ from me!” Ashi barked, shuddering in revulsion as Shisui bristled.

This looked like a long-running argument gearing up to begin again.

“All the more nattou for you then, Uchiha-senpai,” Ietsuna interrupted before they could get going, “I can rely on you to eat it if we get fed on any missions?” he asked plaintively.

“Good idea,” Ashi agreed, “Shove the stinky beans at him since he likes them so much.”

The six year old was clearly struggling between defending the fermented soybean food, or accepting their unanimous decision to give their portions to him should they ever be served any on future missions. He never got the chance to decide one way or the other before Shikaru-sensei finished getting their mission papers signed and stamped by the artisan districts guild-master who hired them to go and collect the discarded metals.

“Sensei!” Ashi called as the Nara meandered his way over, “Dinner at my house tonight, wanna come?” she asked brightly.

He hummed, “What're we eating?” he asked curiously, hands in his pockets.

“Haven't decided yet, I'll figure that out when I know whose coming and what food they don't like,” she declared brightly.

“Ehhh.... I grew up with an Akimichi as a bestfriend. I'll eat anything,” he said lazily with a wry grin. “Right, let's go hand this in to the mission office, and get our pay.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter might be a little delayed. Recently got a tattoo, so my arm hurts, and every time I type the dressing pulls uncomfortably so yeah. Might put writing on pause for a bit until it heals enough that I don't need to cover it 24/7.
> 
> I'll stick a picture on facebook when its healed enough to be shown off XDD


	6. Chapter 6

Dinner at Ashi's was.... an experience, Ietsuna found as he found himself forced into spending the night, sleeping on an only _slightly_ musty futon in the main room, Naruto fast asleep on his chest, Ashi and her puppies snoring less than four feet away on one side, Shisui's near silent breaths on his other.

Picking Naruto up was both amusing and a little embarrassing, when they arrived the first thing out of one Chuunin's mouth had been ' _thank the Kami_ ', the reason being very obvious once they got into the Mission Briefing room – Naruto was crying. And he had clearly been doing so for a _while_. Everyone was looking harried and pained as they went about their duties with the infant howling blue murder against the Sandaime's shoulder as the man gently bounced him with an aggrieved expression that stated he had tried everything but still couldn't get the baby to stop.

Ietsuna barely remembered moving before he was vaulting over the Kage's desk and snatching his little brother from the man's hands. It wasn't instantaneous, but for an upset baby it was pretty quick as Naruto settled down and stopped screaming once he was in the red head's grasp, snuffling helplessly into his neck and gripping his clothes in not-pudgy-enough fingers. They handed the Hokage their mission complete papers and the man saw them off with a number of incredibly relieved Chuunin.

Ashi immediately roped Shisui into helping her get everything they needed for dinner at the local markets while Shikaru-sensei accompanied him back to the orphanage to help him get everything he needed for the night – and to talk to the orphanage caretakers about his future circumstances.

What those circumstances were Ietsuna didn't know just yet, Shikaru-sensei was handling them at the Sandaime's behest apparently, the man was his Superior Officer so it stood to reason, but there had been no sign of such things in the anime or manga as far as he was aware. Though that could be put down to Kishimoto's poor writing and slipshod world building.

While in his room, he made sure to bath, feed, and change Naruto while he had the chance to do so in peace, and then he repacked a bag for the baby making sure to include extra _just in case_. Babies were unpredictable.

Once he was ready, Shikaru-sensei took him to the Inuzuka compound, which was less a walled estate and more just a huge dog park behind a veterinary clinic and a few houses, they were quite traditional it seemed, almost surprisingly so for the rough and tumble people it housed, or so Ietsuna felt. Then again, he told himself he shouldn't be surprised, the Inuzuka put family and Clan at the top of their priorities, so finding out that it was common for families to sleep in piles with their dogs was just par the norm.

He itched to pet all the dogs they passed. He absolutely adored dogs, cats too, but with Naruto in arm, and the Inuzuka ninken being trained animals not unlike military or security hounds, he knew better than to fuss them right now, especially with a baby in arm. They might be docile right _now_ but that could change faster than he could react, and he didn't want to put Naruto at risk by hoping the ninken would be anything but indifferent to better in regards to him and the beast he housed.

A few of the clan called greetings to Shikaru-sensei, recognising him from past missions, but no one stopped them as they went to Ashi's. It was a tiny family home, not quite a single room affair, but close. Migi met them at the door, barking enthusiastically, tail going a mile a minute as Ashi called from inside for them to take their shoes off and get comfortable, Shisui don't stand there like an ornament you're not nearly pretty enough, get the tea! Hey, I'll have you know everyone in the Uchiha Clan is pretty enough to be an ornament! Shikaru-sensei coughed a little, muttering something under his breath too quietly for Ietsuna to catch, but he was 100% certain it was probably dirty and manfully swallowed back a quip of his own about the famed clan of murder-go-lucky dramaqueens.

Ashi lived alone save for Migi and Hidari.

Her house had obviously been lived in by a family at some point, there were signs of DIY repairs on the sliding doors, in careful repair patches on the tatami flooring of the main room, but she had obviously been alone for a while judging by the more clumsy repairs and then the careless straw and tape used to cover the holes. Shisui appeared with a grin and a tray as the sounds of chaos continued from a room a little further down the short hall, Migi immediately rushing into the main room and jumping on Hidari who was quietly curled up. The three sat down and had tea while waiting for Ashi to finish cooking, chatting about techniques and ninjutsu, Shisui craning his head to get a better look at Naruto every now and again making Ietsuna bristle defensively (less and less as he continued to do so, annoyingly enough, he was getting used to the Uchiha trying to get a look and since he wasn't doing anything _bad_ he couldn't really tell him to stop).

Eventually the Inuzuka girl brought out a complete feast, white rice, miso soup, teriyaki chicken skewers, vegetable skewers, soba noodles, grilled fish, pickled shredded cabbage, and even gyudon beef bowl – she said she didn't know what everyone liked best so she just made a whole variety of things so dig in!

As was inevitable when involving food and dogs, eventually it seemed as though half the Inuzuka clan stuck their heads in to see if they could scrounge some food, and Ietsuna had the dubious pleasure of meeting Inuzuka Tsume, Hana, and Kiba. He said dubious because he found Tsume absolutely terrifying, and Hana's obvious hero-worship crush on Shisui a little uncomfortable given how she had yet to start the Academy. How on earth she had managed to dodge early draft he didn't know, but he figured it probably had something to do with Tsume and the taste of anger and protectiveness he felt in her Chakra – she apparently didn't approve of 'pups' leaving the den at their age, which.... was actually surprising as much as it wasn't.

Kiba was just old enough to start taking notice of his surroundings, and was absolutely fascinated by Naruto and Ietsuna who likely had colouring that he had never seen before in the clan, Ietsuna with his rusty red hair and Naruto with his dandelion blond. At his age his eyes probably weren't developed enough to see them clearly, so all he was making out were the bright colours, which meant he was all smiles and pointing and babbling. Ietsuna didn't dare offer to take him off the clan head's hands given the way her ninken was eyeing him a hair short of threateningly.

“Uncle! Stop scaring Ietsuna-kun! He's my teammate!” the ten year old girl eventually barked, slamming her miso bowl onto the table as she glared down at Kuromaru making Hana jump in her seat and nearly drop her bowl of rice over herself.

The red head blanched, “I-it's okay, Inuzuka-san!”

“No -san!” the girl snarled pointing at him without removing her eyes from the dog's own, _blatantly_ challenging him and his authority, “It's Ashi to you!”

Ietsuna wilted in his seat, arms wrapped around Naruto miserably. He knew he shouldn't have come, that his being Naruto's caretaker, bringing him _into_ a clan compound was stupid. The Inuzuka suffered a lot of losses against the Kyuubi, how could they not when their fighting style was to throw themselves and their ninken at the enemy and rip them apart with their bare hands? And there was absolutely no chance they would just stand on the sidelines while a tailed beast attacked their territory, their people and pack.

Ashi growled glaring at him, “I can smell your guilt, Tsu-chan! Stop it! _I_ invited you into _my_ home!”

“Into _our_ clan territory,” Tsume interjected mildly, her ever so slight grin making Hana relax in her seat and return to giving the warily watching Shisui moon eyes (not that he was even looking in her direction, too busy watching Tsume and Kuromaru).

The ten year old wavered before scowling, “Yes. I did. Because Tsu-chan is in my pack now. He's my teammate and I like him a _lot_ better than any of the _other_ idiots that we got assigned before,” she declared firmly.

“He brought the Container into our den,” Kuromaru growled, not harshly, but not kindly either making Hana gasp and jerk backwards as she stared at the baby in his arms.

Ietsuna shifted his knees and weight, ready to leap away in a split second as he clutched Naruto tightly, the infant whining unhappily as he was squished a bit.

“And it could have been Kiba,” Ashi snapped out, making the large ninken tilt his head, “It could have been Kiba being the Container if he had been closer. It could have been Shino-chan, or Hinata-chan,” she reiterated stubbornly as she scowled at the dog. “I'm not stupid, Uncle. I know what Naruto-chan is, what is inside of him. But if you're going to seal a kunai into a scroll, you're not going to throw the scroll at someone and expect it to cut them, are you?” she demanded sarcastically, making Ietsuna jerk and stare at her as his own words were thrown at the jounin ninken.

Migi and Hidari joined in, barking and yipping and whining as they darted to Ietsuna's side, one of them even going so far as to wedge its head under his arm to lay ontop of Naruto and give the larger dog their best puppy-eyes.

Tsume looked at Shikaru who stared back at her, long and level, over his cup of tea.

She snorted, and then threw herself down at the table, “That's that then,” she declared at volume before she set Kiba against her leg and stole Ashi's ricebowl and chopsticks, “Go and get your father's sake, girl, while I get to know your new partners!” she commanded, making the ten year old immediately brighten up.

“Yes!” the girl exclaimed, leaping to her feet and racing out into the kitchen.

Shikaru snorted as he set his drink down, “Kushina would have raised herself from the grave to kick your ass herself if you'd gone any other way,” he observed as the woman snatched several slices of beef from the serving pot to add to her stolen rice.

Tsume's expression softened, “If the Shinigami himself didn't already have her locked in the darkest corners of his world, she would already be here. Nothing would keep her away from her baby otherwise,” the woman said bitterly before looking sternly at Ietsuna only to snort a little when he cringed away from her. “Sit up straight, kid, I'm not going to eat you. So, what's your name?”

What followed was a very uncomfortable evening for Ietsuna as he was practically interrogated by the Inuzuka Clan head, and learned that Ashi's mother was Tsume's cousin through her father's sister in law. Not incredibly close, and not blood related, but enough for the woman to take personal interest in her well-being after she was orphaned during the war and suddenly reassigned to a significantly politically hotter team than before. Enough so that she received an automatic notification from the Hokage's office informing her of the reassignment – usually reassignment papers were not delivered to clan heads unless the team-placement was... delicate.

Hana eventually managed to get Shisui to talk to her, but while she might read something into it, Ietsuna was familiar enough with polite conversation to read the discomfort from where he was suffering his own particular uncomfortable conversation. Shikaru-sensei was absolutely no help, lazily watching everything unfold with amusement as he and Tsume started drinking out of the sake stash belonging to Ashi's late father.

By the time the 'interrogation' finished, Hana was yawning, Kiba had already fallen asleep, Naruto was whimpering for food that Ashi was happy to warm up for him, and Shikaru-sensei had decided that he'd had enough social for the night and left after telling them to be at the training ground for eight tomorrow morning.

Tsume bade her goodbyes with good humour, and herded her children home.

Ietsuna had been fully willing to walk back to the orphanage but neither Ashi nor Shisui were hearing about it, it was dark and cold outside, and besides, didn't he say people didn't like Naruto? It would be dangerous to walk around afterdark with him like this, better stay the night. By the time he had gotten out of the bathroom, there were already three futons laid out and Shisui was sprawled on his stomach stroking Naruto's hair where Ietsuna had laid him down on his jacket while he sorted himself out.

“I thought he would be weird, y'know?” the Uchiha admitted quietly, the sound of Ashi and her dogs in the kitchen as they did the washing up filling the air. “When word got out that the Kyuubi was sealed in a person, I thought they'd end up with, like, fox ears or something. Or be covered in sealing script like the old stories. But all he got were the cute whiskers,” the boy said with a grin.

“He was born with those,” Ietsuna corrected quietly, “And because of where the Yondaime placed the seal you won't be seeing it for a few more years to come, not until Naruto accesses his Chakra,” the red head explained as he sat down beside the pair. Hawk's signature was still in the ceiling above them, so he knew the young Uchiha hadn't done anything, and out of everyone in the clan Shisui was actually the one he trusted the _most_ when it came to Naruto. Itachi would turn on him in a heartbeat if it were a choice between him and Sasuke, and while he _wanted_ to think that Mikoto would do right by her bestfriend's son, she hadn't bothered in canon, so.... he didn't know where that left her in the grand scheme of things beyond a willing participant in the coupé that would have thrown Konoha into turmoil and civil war, and potentially torn it apart.

Shisui snorted, “You know a lot about this, huh?” he said.

Ietsuna shrugged, picking at his toenail, “I have to. No one else does.”

“Ahh-hahah, that is true.”

They fell into an almost awkward silence after that as Shisui continued to stroke the baby's head as he slept, and Ashi continued to wash the dishes in the kitchen while Ietsuna awkwardly felt like he should have done something to help, but wasn't exactly willing to leave Naruto alone with a semi-complete stranger. He had a feeling a lot of time with his team was going to be a bit like this. Awkward silences and feeling like he should be doing something else but unable to.

 

* * *

 

D-ranks, D-ranks, _D-ranks_.

For the record, he both loved and hated Shikaru-sensei.

D-ranks paid, not particularly _well_ , but they paid. They were fairly quick and easy to perform if you knew what you were doing (and between the three of them they generally did), so they could do multiples of them in a day once they finished their morning training. The only downside was that it brought them into contact with the general public – and the public was not fond of Ietsuna.

And neither was he fond of them.

Somehow, the customer _always_ found something wrong with his work, or changed their mind once he was finished and wanted it redone. It was getting to the point of ridiculousness and even Shikaru-sensei was losing patience with some of their civilian employers, watching them with a patient menace that seemed to keep all but the most vile tongued and arrogant of them quiet.

The only benefit of this was that, despite long have accrued the needed number of D-ranks to progress onto a C-rank, once their teamwork was deemed to an acceptable standard they were immediately marched to the Hokage's office for an out of village C-rank mission. Item retreival from the now defunct Yugakure no Sato. Ietsuna tried not to blanch noticeably, but damn that Inuzuka nose, Ashi noticed the sudden stench of fear from him, and _damn_ Uchiha perceptiveness as well while he was at it because Shisui noticed it as well!

Not much was known about Yugakure in the anime/manga, just that it was _once_ a Shinobi village, and also the home of one Hidan, S-ranked ninja of Akatsuki and devotee of the bloodthirsty Jashin cult. Knowing what he did now of Shinobi politics, Ietsuna figured that Yugakure had taken a swipe at either Kumo or Kiri during the conflicts and gotten slapped down hard as most minor villages were likely to have been. The terms of their peace treaty seemed to be demilitarisation – like the Japanese following World War 2 in his old life. Hence why Yugakure no Sato was no longer a shinobi village, but one that was now struggling desperately economically in the wake of the war and now this. The country's Daimyou was doing everything within his power to try and keep their struggling economy afloat so as not to be subsumed by either Frost or Fire. Selling off entire jutsu libraries, priceless weapons, bulk uniforms, casting down both gambling and prostitution laws and imposing heavy taxes on both, they were staying afloat – just. And since their mission was to go to Yugakure and return with a rather sizeable jutsu collection that had been purchased at auction via intermediaries, Ietsuna was predicting no small amount of potential interference as soon as he heard about the mission.

He hoped they didn't run into Hidan.

Or any Jashinists.

Or Han.

It was probably ridiculous to immediately think of the Iwa Jinchuuriki, but exactly _when_ he become a Missing Nin was unknown, and if _Ietsuna_ was a giant man who wore what was _literally_ the shinobi equivalent to steam-punk _Powerarmour_ , he'd hide in a country well known and famous for it's hot-springs, saunas, and steam. _Less people would notice or think it was weird_. But then again, he already knew he had too much common sense for ninja.

He really hoped the C-rank curse was fanon, not canon. His heart couldn't handle it.

Not when he bore it in mind that he needed to do a minimum of twenty five C-ranks before he was officially cleared for a B-rank on his file. After that he would need to be a Chuunin, minimum, and have an allotted thirty B-ranks before he would be considered on recruitment for an A-rank, _officially_. There were always exceptions in a ninja village. Kekkei Genkai, special techniques, knowledge pertinent to the mission at hand, all these things could result in a genin being assigned a mission above their pay grade. Konoha was also one of the very few villages that also put _personal investment_ amongst the potential exceptions to appropriate mission-rankings.

“It shouldn't take longer than a week,” Shikaru-sensei informed them dryly as they left the Mission Office, their scroll tucked into his flack vest as they decended the stairs, “It _shouldn't_ take that long, it's only two days to Yugakure, and we won't be there for longer than a day, but anything can happen. The war only ended a short while ago, and some people's wounds are still raw.” He shrugged a shoulder as Ashi shot him a look of anger, “Let's not borrow trouble though. Ietsuna, this is your first mission out of the village, do you need help packing?” he asked, craning his head back to where the red head was lingering at the back of the team looking uncomfortable (as usual – but slightly more distressed than the norm).

Golden eyes blinked up at him, “Eh? Oh! N-no, I'm okay sensei. They told us what to bring in the Academy.”

“In otherwise, you need help,” Ashi declared with a grin, “They always tell you to bring too much of the wrong stuff. I didn't unpack from our last out of village mission so all I gotta do is run back and replace some stuff, I'll swing by the orphanage when I'm done to help,” she promised before running off, Migi and Hidari on her heels.

Ietsuna pouted at her back, “I know how to pack a mission bag,” he complained.

Shisui laughed, “I thought so too, but trust me, even I was wrong! Inuzuka really know their stuff. And, Tsuna-kun? Don't be worried, yeah? Ashi and I won't let anything happen to you,” he promised with a grin, “We like you too much to let you escape us now.”

He chuckled awkwardly as the Uchiha waved goodbye and split away from them at the next junction, Shikaru-sensei smirking at him as they fell into step with each other.

“So young and yet so popular,” the man lamented, “Girls coming over, boys promising to protect you... What a little heartbreaker.”

Ietsuna scowled up at him, “Don't be gross!” he protested, feeling his face beginning to flush. Gods, they were children, and yes, _so was he_ , kind of. Life experiences and memories aside he was still six, he just had the memories and emotional/mental maturity of someone closer to – oh no, Sensei was actually closer to Ietsuna's _physical_ age than his mental age.

Shikaru-sensei lifted his hands peaceably, “Alright, alright. Oh, some good news, the paperwork for your new accommodations will be finalised by the time we get back,” he explained making the red head look up at him in surprise. He had actually forgotten he was supposed to be moving out of the orphanage after three weeks of nothing happening. The Nara nodded, “I've got my old teammate's keeping an eye on everything while we're away so you won't end up in a dump at least.”

He had been the unfortunate Nara-male to end up in a team with two kunoichi from his sibling clans.

With the likes of Yamanaka Inoko and Akimichi Chomei looking after his interests, he found himself relaxing against his will. Which only made sensei snort with amusement, though he couldn't blame his young student. Anyone attempting to cross Inoko was an idiot and would get everything they deserved and then some with how vindictive she could be, and Chomei would make them feel guilty for making her teammate exert herself punishing them. It was Chomei who was the real power in their team, but she was, of course, far too nice to knowingly wield it – but she would still make you feel guilty for forcing her teammates to stab you.

“You may come back to find Inoko's already decorated though, just to warn you,” he added, watching the boy flinch a little and start to sweat with amusement.

She wouldn't – she was well aware that a little boy's space was his own, but that didn't change the fact that Shikaru was still going to take unholy amusement in holding it over his head until the end of the mission.

Speaking of...

“Shi-chan!” Inoko's familiar voice called from further down the market place, making the pair of them pause as she abandoned the shinobi she was talking to in order to jog over. Inoko was a beautiful kunoichi, built like a willow-frond with pale golden hair and the characteristic pupil-less eyes of her clan in a more unusual shade of blue-violet, and she liked to wear white, and a lot of it to make the thin scarlet paint of her lips stand out all the more. Her long hair was braided and twisted into a bun at the back of her head, and her dress slit up both thighs to indecent lengths to reveal both kunai holsters on her hips, and her white heels. She beamed as she drew level with them, “And hello to you too Tsu-chan,” she cooed in greeting, having decided that Ietsuna was possibly the second cutest thing in the world the first time they met (the first cutest being Chomei's little cousin Chouji who was about five months older than Naruto and utterly rollypolly cuddle-central adorable – according to Inoko).

“Hi, Inoko-san,” Ietsuna greeted, suffering the headpat he received from the jounin before she turned on Shikaru-sensei.

“I hear you're heading for Hot Water Country, can you do me a favour?” she demanded, leaving little to the imagination that it was, in fact, a demand, not a request.

Sensei sighed, “Ietsuna, best go do your packing. I have a feeling I'll be here a while,” he complained, not even flinching when Inoko elbowed him in the side, pouting in faux indignation.

The red head made his hasty retreat, swallowing against his rising nausea.

He had a bad feeling about this.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yamanaka Inoko and Akimichi Chomei are OCs 8)
> 
> Sorry about the delay on chapters, Reighost has firmly dragged me off track into the FFXV fandom again. We seem to keep doing this to ourselves, one of us will go to a different fandom to work on something and a few days later the other will try and drag the first into their CURRENT fandom that they're writing for, and then it just devolves from there because we're both weak and easily influenced. In other news, I have three new WIP just this week alone. OTL


	7. Chapter 7

They left for their mission that afternoon, once they'd all packed and had a quick meal. Ietsuna thought he'd had mission packing down pretty well, and while he had been better than Ashi had expected, he still had some useless things in there that she was quite happy to trim off and explain that it would be easier to just use chakra to fulfil that function. Like his tinder-box. Their mission wasn't clandestine, they weren't undercover, or hiding, nor were they going into another country where they weren't allowed – there was no reason to have it when with a little flex of chakra they could start a fire no problem.

Ietsuna tried not to let his anxiety get the better of him, but judging by how Hidari eventually fall back to run beside him as they travelled east, he probably wasn't very successful. Ashi was occasionally throwing him looks of concern, and while Shisui wasn't quite as blatant about his concern, the fact that every time he did his team-check he doubled checked him and then asked Ietsuna to perform a sensor check of their surroundings – apparently either his anxiety was wearing off, or he was trying to get Ietsuna to relax by reinforcing the idea that they were fine.

It wasn't going to work, but the effort was appreciated.

He didn't know what he expected when they reached Hot Water country, but Ietsuna had been surprised either way despite not having any particular expectations. He knew it was famous for its natural hot springs, thus the country's namesake, so he had expected it to be rocky, mountainous, or possibly even volcanic much like the hot spring resorts of Japan, and it was indeed all of those things while being unexpectedly lush with trees, vines, and _almost_ tropical flowers.

Yugakure was beautiful. Small, and built into the side of a dead volcano long blown, the gaping maw of the mountain capped with solid stone had once been a training ground, now it was under development, the skeletal structures of future gambling halls, brothels, tea houses, and bathhall hotels filled the desolate crater. In time, with a little care and some dedication, there would be some stunning gardens in there, they were already sectioned out and in the process of being cultivated. Volcanic ash was amazingly fertile and for a moment, Ietsuna made a mental note to come back in ten or so years to see what had become of the place, he was sure it would be a sight to behold. The village proper sat at the mouth of the opening, spilling down the side of the mountain like a red and white stain amidst the lush green foliage. Already, all signs of it being a shinobi village had been torn down and it was clear that both Shisui and Ashi found that disconcerting if the way they looked around was any indication, their faces pinching as they saw hide-spots laid open or filled in, reinforced roofs purposefully weakened, and just about every single fuuinjutsu tag or carving placed upon every structure obliterated – sometimes at the cost of the structure itself judging by some of the reconstruction. Demilitarizing a shinobi village, even a small one, without destroying the entire village and building it back up from scratch took time, and it seemed as though they were coming in on the tail end of those efforts.

“Okay,” Shikaru-sensei announced after they'd finished signing in, “I'll go and pick up the order. Hokage-sama wanted to open some further negotiations, so you kids go.... scout or something. Don't leave the village, meet here at sundown,” he ordered plainly as he ruffled Ietsuna's hair and then meandered off and away.

“He can't be serious, can he?” Ashi demanded in disbelief.

“I know we're still genin but – ” Shisui muttered only for his eyes to slide to Ietsuna and his mouth to twist itself shut with a guilty grimace. The red head fought not to roll his eyes, yes, Shisui, do try to remember that for all you and your partner may have done in the war, _he_ was still so fresh he could give a toad's ass a run for its money in the shades of green category.

“Let's check some of the apothecaries,” Ietsuna suggested quietly, “We might as well do some information retrieval while we're here. Maybe with the village demilitarised we can buy some of the recipes to take back home,” he theorised quietly.

Ashi lit up, “That's actually a good idea! Yeah, let's do that! They might even be selling weapons at a discount, maybe we can get hold of something decent at _half_ the price!” she gushed, eyes bright with the thought of finally getting her hands on something a little more destructive than kunai.

Their Uchiha teammate chuckled a little awkwardly, “Do either of you two have any money?” he asked dryly.

The kunoichi froze, and then comedically slumped with a groan, she was barely above the poverty line even for an Inuzuka who lived fairly frugally anyway. Shisui as the only shinobi in his family was their sole bread-winner and thus all of his money went towards keeping them afloat. Ietsuna..... Ietsuna was paid handsomely by the Hokage to take care of Naruto, on top of that he received his genin pay, and because he was still in his first year of being a genin, he was still receiving his orphan bursary from the village coffers.

...Was he actually the most financially stable of all his friends?

That was... new.

“Uhm... if it's for the village, I have the funds, and I'm sure there's... I don't know, some kind of receipt reclaim thing? Right? Business expenses?” he asked curiously, peering between the two senior shinobi. This was one of the things that was never covered in the manga, nor was it brought up in the Academy – well it might have? In his final year, that he skipped. There was supposed to be a logistics module somewhen in his training, wasn't there? Actually, that got dropped didn't it? He remembered hearing Tsubaki-sensei complaining about it. Logistics were supposed to be taught in the academy, but due to the war, it was instead pushed onto the jounin senseis so that they could get combatants out on the front lines faster. How much else was dropped from the Academy curriculum to get genin out on the field faster?

Ashi hummed while Shisui rubbed his chin, “I've not heard about it. But we _are_ just genin. I know that Chuunin and Jounin get more authority to do that sort of thing. Let's go take a look, we don't have to buy anything yet, and we can ask Sensei when he gets back later?” the older girl suggested thoughtfully.

The trio of genin meandered through the village, Ietsuna didn't really stop them from going into any shop that particularly took their fancy, but he did refuse to buy a few things, largely because he didn't think Ashi needed a stack of explosive notes on a 'discount' (the very suspicious voice in the back of his head said it would be a very _shinobi_ thing to do to sabotage the tags for any foreign ninja looking to profit off the village's demilitarisation). He stopped them at a promising looking takoyaki stand and they got enough for themselves, and a take-away portion for sensei in case he showed up any time soon. There was nothing of particular note in the weapon shops, or at the blacksmithers, much of the structures had been voided of weaponry and ninja paraphernalia, the artisans bitter and scowling. They were loyal to the Hidden Village of Yugakure, not so to the Daimyou of Hot Water. This must have felt like a slap and spit to the face of their years of loyal service.

He didn't disrespect them by suggesting they go to Konoha, or another hidden village. And he pulled Ashi out before she could do so instead.

All in all, it was mid-afternoon when they found their way into one of the old tea gardens to eat something a little more substantial than their trays of takoyaki.

“Thanks for the bento, Tsuna-kun!” Ashi exclaimed as she eagerly dug into her chicken katsu with rice. Shisui nodded, grunting an agreement around a mouthful of soba while the youngest of their team chuckled nervously a little at the hungry appreciation. Yugakure was very beautiful, but the underlying malcontent, the anger and the hurt, and the _bitterness_ of its residents made him hyper-aware and incredibly anxious throughout their entire trip through the village, to the point where Hidari spent more time at his hip than with Ashi. His anxiety had bled through to the rest of the team so that while they all appeared to be unaffected fresh genin out and about they were, all of them, tense and wary and one loud yell in their ear away from drawing weapons; the few remaining shinobi of Yugakure that hadn't upped sticks and moved elsewhere looked at them with wary eyes instead of scorn because of it (small sparks of pride followed in their wake as if to say, yes, we are still shinobi, yes, you know that we aren't toothless lame dogs yet, not yet, not ever, you can see this, _you_ at least are not stupid, we are still strong, we are still to be feared).

But it was exhausting to be terrified all the time, hence why he pulled his teammates away to eat and unwind. They were used to battlefield tension, not low grade constant anxiety radiation. They were approaching strung out and waspish before he provided food and escape.

Ietsuna cracked open his chicken teriyaki and rice and got stuck in even as Ashi unsealed some raw meat and high energy kibble bites for Migi and Hidari to chow down on. He's about halfway through his bento, letting his teammate's chatter wash over him like a warm bath, their slowly easing nerves like sunshine on his skin – and then it rippled.

He paused, like a dog hearing something too high for his master's ears, only this wasn't a sound, it was a _feeling_. Rippling across his senses like a vibration, he swallowed his mouthful and, with the awkwardness of a talent not used very much, he felt for it, feeling.... like... bone. Bleached bones, rotting blood, flowers budding only to flower and die, a dance with a a sudden cut at the crescendo. Something that felt a lot like water, or earth...

“Tsuna?” Shisui asked as he got to his feet.

“There's... someone over there,” he stated distantly, frowning as the feeling of hunger, loneliness, and fear, of something that felt a lot like... _newness_ thrummed through it all, fear at the newness, fear at being left behind, being alone always but that was normal, to be expected, the faint flavour of blood...

He left the tea garden behind, making his way into the trees and to the edge of the village where there was a small clearing, likely used often by poorer travellers judging by the worn paths and patches here and there of differently coloured grasses where latrines had been dug in the prior years.

The little white haired boy sat a the foot of a gnarled old tree was almost expected, as much as it was unexpected.

“Oh,” Ashi said, “Is this who you sensed?” she asked, coming out from behind him, his whole team having followed him from the garden and into the little clearing.

Ietsuna hummed, yes, this was the person he sensed. He couldn't have been much older than Ietsuna himself, unhealthily pale, almost as if he had never seen daylight before in his life, coarse silver coloured long hair, dirty blue clothing, and when he looked up, it was with large frightened green eyes, and two red dots on his forehead. He was clearly terrified, especially of the three shinobi that had just invaded his clearing.

Tsuna offered the boy a kind smile, “Hey, you okay?” he asked gently as the boy scrambled to his feet and brandished a kunai clumsily in their direction, panting with terror.

“Stay away!” he cried, and Tsuna raised his hands and took a step back.

“It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you. My friends and I were having lunch when I sensed you. You're hungry, right? Do you want to eat with us?” he asked softly. This kid was fucking _terrified_ of _everything_. Of them, of his surroundings, of the frickin' _sky_ if the feeling of being sucked up and swallowed by _vast-everything-inescapable-want darkness want enclosure_ was any indication. “I'm Ietsuna, these are my friends, Shisui and Ashi, and these are Ashi's dogs, Migi and Hidari.”

Green eyes flickered around them all even as his face screwed up, “Th-those aren't names!” he objected.

Ashi huffed irritably under her breath making Ietsuna grin, “They are. But I do admit, they're a little odd for people and pets. If you want to stay there, that's fine. We can eat over here. But you seemed really scared.”

The boy shook a little, lowering the kunai, “You.... were _worried_ about me?” he asked, sounding honestly bewildered. Ietsuna nodded, of course he was worried. A six year old feeling that kind of fear? Never mind the fact that Ietsuna could _feel_ it under his skin, of course he would be worried about a child in that kind of terror. Never mind his more recently attuned Big Brother Instincts perking up at the feeling of someone hungry and lonely, almost the same flavour of hungry and lonely as Naruto got some times. “You... _cared_?” he asked with such a heartbreaking tone of brittle vulnerability that he felt his stomach twist in empathetic pain even as he nodded firmly, lips pressed shut against their trembling.

Making sure the boy could see his hands at all times, Ietsuna carefully sat himself down on the grass, feeling more than seeing Ashi and Shisui exchange looks and pulled faces, before they shrugged and followed his lead, sitting down as well. The kid wet his lips and slowly sank back down, still gripping his kunai in too tight fingers with his thumb in the wrong place, but he seemed to at least be willing to trust them this far.

Ietsuna collected his bento, and then, making sure it was carefully sealed up, he slid it over the grass to the kid, “Eat up. There's probably about half left, but I had a big breakfast so I can't finish it, and I hate wasting food,” he added, desperately hoping that this kid didn't have much in the way of pride.

The silver haired boy almost ran away from the box as it came to a stop in front of him, Ietsuna could feel it throbbing through the air, the urge to just get away, the distrust, the fear, but the kid was a lot braver, or hungrier, than they had given him credit for because it was with very little fanfare or conversation that he dug into the food after inspecting it for a moment. He didn't even use the chopsticks, just sticking his fingers into the food and shovelling it into his mouth, not fast enough to choke, but definitely fast enough to get as much as possible before it got snatched away.

Slowly, conversation between Team Five started up again, they kept it about things they saw around Hot Water, all too aware of the unknown kid to risk saying anything about their mission or Konoha even though it was clearly obvious where they were from, and eventually, things relaxed. The kid finished the bento and sat watching them curiously, picking the last crumbs of rice and sauce from the tray to nibble, and then he pulled a splinter of bone out from the back of his hand to pick at his teeth.

Kaguya Kimimarou.

This was Kaguya Kimimarou, Orochimaru's most loyal lieutenant, killed by Sabaku no Gaara and Rock Lee during Sasuke's defection, twelve years from now, succumbing to a combination of their abilities and his own illness. He... should not be here. He should be in Mizu no Kuni. He – he should be being kept underground by his clan unless, oh.

Of course.

A demilitarised village selling off weapons and _jutsu libraries_.

He was here with Orochimaru. On their way to Oto – only it wasn't Oto yet, was it? This was before the village was founded. How many of the shinobi from Oto were originally from Yugakure? Two birds with one stone, Orochimaru could purchase their libraries and recruit their disillusioned, prideful, _bitter_ shinobi to his own village, or at least lay the building work for it, whisper into the right ears about opportunities in the Land of Rice. No wonder they hadn't sensed him at first, no wonder there was that same ripple. That had been whatever obscuring jutsu had been hiding him falling.

Shisui shook him, “Tsuna-kun? Are you alright, you look like you're going to throw up,” the Uchiha asked worriedly, even as he kept half an eye on the strange white haired boy.

Possibilities flickered through his mind, too fast for him to really think hard on them. Orochimaru was in the village. He was slinking and oozing around to try and get hold of more jutsu. They had just purchased a jutsu library. Sensei was collecting it – sensei was on his own, trying to open up further negotiations. They could leave Kimimarou alone. Hope the old snake left them be, pretend they saw nothing. But one word from Kimimarou would destroy that. Kimimarou who was... who was six. Same as him. And being taken by _Orochimaru_ to be _experimented_ on, who would be brainwashed, conditioned, would become mindless and slavish and twisted – who was only _six_.

Twelve years under Orochimaru's personal attention... and then abandoned and discarded like rubbish at the end of it... his body too ruined to be of use beyond... giving Sasuke time to make his escape.

He didn't even realise he was casting the genjutsu before the white haired boy crumpled, his untrained mind having no defence, no recognition, just like a civilian.

“Tsuna!” Ashi yelped.

The red head scooped him up, over his shoulder, “We need to go. We need to go _right now_.” He was jittering, shaking hard, his chakra was burning inside him with the force he cycled it through his body. He didn't – he couldn't explain it, not without outing himself, he just ran.

He locked onto that distant warm glow that spoke of sunshine and home and _Naruto_ , and he ran.

“Tsuna! What about the mission!” Ashi screamed, taking off after him.

“Sensei's doing it! He's a jounin! He can catch up!” Please catch up, please catch up before _he_ does – the ripple, the sudden awareness he had of Kimimarou, that must have been when Orochimaru left him for the day, wondered off to find whatever it was he came there for and took whatever dampening ability he was using with him. They might have the whole night to get a headstart, they might only have a few hours, it didn't matter, maybe he wouldn't care enough about Kimimarou to hunt them down?

Shisui grabbed his arm, keeping pace with him, his eyes were shining Sharingan red, “What's really going on, Tsuna?” he demanded harshly.

Ietsuna swallowed fearfully, no one would believe him, but... aren't they – how did he – he was a chakra sensor but Orochimaru could _hide_ from that – he –

“O-Orochimaru's last known location was Mizu. Yugakure is selling off _jutsu_ libraries. He steals children and experiments on them, and there's a Kaguya Kekkei Genkai user _here_ that I didn't sense until halfway through our meal,” he listed growing semi-hysterical, “I know that man's chakra! I felt it that night! There was a _void_! He's here! He's here and he took this kid and he's in Yugakure!”

Shisui paled by several degrees, whatever his sharingan picked up from Ietsuna's face, he decided to trust him for now even as Ashi suddenly shut up, her own face paler by degrees. They kept running, Shisui digging into his pocket and writing a note that was shoved into Migi's mouth, the dog bouncing off the next tree and slingshotting himself back towards the village at a sprint.

A message to sensei, most likely.

Ietsuna didn't question it, he put his head down and carefully filtered his chakra through his body, breaking up the build-up of lactic acid in his lungs, reinforcing the oxygen absorption of his blood, filtering his lungs and strengthening them, cushioning the impact on his joints as he ran and leapt.

He didn't think.

His mind was filled with blood and horror, knowledge that he had just stolen a child from an S-ranked missing nin, the man that would later kill the Sandaime, and bring back _all_ the Hokages, who would stand at the end of the world, and decide which side won with all the grace and cold calculation of a snake. Deciding which one would best serve his ambitions, his desires, which one would be more _interesting_. He did not think of the interrogation he would face from the Sandaime, he did not think of this mission, of how his teammates would view him for this, he didn't think of how Konoha as a whole would view his complete abandonment of the mission to rescue a child, valuable Kekkei Genkai or not. He didn't think.

And he was determined not to.

Disassociation was.... an old friend. But this was a little different.

This was the first time he had done it to himself using the compartmentalisation techniques taught to them at the Academy, this was the first time he had carefully threaded chakra into his own brain and cast what was _basically_ an E-ranked genjutsu _on himself_. He disassociated, and focused all of his attention on the Three. The Three things he would pour all of himself into.

Get to Naruto (get to Konoha).  
Run Fast (faster faster faster).  
Do Not Stop (I don't want to die).

So they ran. Ietsuna pouring his chakra into his limbs, leading the way through the trees and untamed terrain down the mountain of Yugakure, Ashi and Shisui keeping pace with him, likely able to move faster as they weren't weighted down like him, but neither offered to take his burden, either through anger at him or uncertainty of how he would react or whether they decided they would be better suited to protecting him on this suicide run back to Konoha, he didn't know, couldn't fathom, didn't bother to try.

He just ran, even as the sun began to set and the world fell into darkness, leaving Ashi to find her way by her nose, Shisui via his Sharingan, and Ietsuna with his Chakra Sense.

At this pace they would reach Fire Country by lunch tomorrow.

Konoha proper by dawn the next day.

Sensei caught up with them halfway through the night, falling into place amidst them without even a rustle of fabric or a brush of wind, and yet none of them were surprised, they had all seen, smelt, and felt him coming.

“Report,” the Jounin demanded as he kept pace, tense and angry.

“Tsuna felt something weird,” Ashi immediately spoke up eyes tracking their teacher as he casually bowled Migi through the air in an underarm throw that put him in line with Hidari, the two dogs panting happily at each other but not daring to bark in the dark. “We found the kid in a clearing on the outskirts. Ietsuna fed him, we figured he was just some scared lost kid. Then he pulled a bone out the back of his hand and Tsuna freaked, Genjutsu'd him, and started to run.”

Shisui wrinkled his nose, “He said felt Orochimaru's chakra,” the Uchiha admitted, “That it was a void until he could sense the kid.”

Shikaru-sensei stayed silent for a moment before looking at Ietsuna, who didn't notice, too busy putting one foot in front of the other, too focused on breathing, on maintaining his constant cycling chakra rhythm that he hadn't yet perfected to subconscious the way that front-line shinobi eventually managed.

The Jounin huffed, “We will discuss this properly in Konoha. But you'll be relieved to know I got all three missions done,” he stated, making the two senior genin look at him curiously.

“Three? I thought there was only two?” Ashi asked warily.

“Inoko,” the Nara grunted, and the two 'ahh'ed in realisation, letting the matter drop as knowing it was the Yamanaka that issued the unknown third mission was all that _they_ needed to know.

Whether they believed him or not was beside the point, Ietsuna had passed out of all awareness of his teammates, focusing just on running, on getting home (Naruto). Whether they spoke to him, or tried to get him to stop so they could take a break and sleep or eat, he didn't know, because he kept running.

The fact that he did....

was probably the only reason Shikaru-sensei made it out alive.

Because of course Orochimaru caught up.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, sorry for the delay. That scene where Ietsuna basically just abducts some kid was.... awkward. It needed rewriting a bit – and then other fandom's grabbed me by the damn head and yanked me onto a different traintrack entirely. As I'm sure everyone could tell. But sufficed to say, Thanatophobia is not discontinued, on hiatus, or dead. I'm just lazy as shit, depressed, and easily distracted XDDD
> 
> 1) I have never watched the anime, so I don't actually know what Hot Water Country looks like, this is an entirely OC depiction of the place.  
> 2) The history behind why Yugakure no Sato was demilitarised is entirely non-canon, as no reason is ever actually given. Again, it's all my own headcanons.  
> 3) Orochimaru being in Yugakure - IT MAKES SENSE OKAY. It's pretty much direction on the way between Kiri and Oto as well. Fight me.


	8. Chapter 8

He felt him long before he saw him. Cold skin-earth-internal rot-tunnels and warrens and labyrinths in the dark-poison-wrath and ruin-pull a spider's legs off to see how it moves-pull it apart to understand how it works-put it back together again and try to make something new – if he had the oxygen to spare for it, Ietsuna might have sobbed at the feel of it. Instead, all he could do was bow his head, run faster, and pry a hand from Kimimarou's knee to sign at Shisui – _Incoming six enemy s-rank_.

For the Uchiha, the first sign of their encroaching death was the broken whine his teammate panted out, high and fractured with terror inbetween panting breaths, how he forced himself to move faster even as his fingers flashed through familiar combat sign. And Shisui felt his blood chill – Ietsuna... could be wrong – but – could they take the risk? Their team had three Clans present, and Ietsuna had just stolen someone with a Kekkei Genkai if he was to be believed. No. They couldn't risk it. Tsuna had never given him cause to doubt him before, strange behaviour on the mission aside.

They were half a day out of Konoha, but they had been moving at a steady run, mindful of their reserves despite how desperately Ietsuna ran. If they sped up, they were only a few hours out. Too far out, really. And if Orochimaru were coming up hard on their backs, then undoubtedly he did not fear Konoha enough to turn back now. He would continue the pursuit.

They needed back up.

He swallowed, and ran through familiar hand-signs, summoning a crow to wing beside them. Well aware that the brief puff of Chakra would tell a sensor of Orochimaru's calibre exactly where they were.

“Karok! Message for the Hokage! Team Five coming in with the package – Orochimaru in pursuit! Go!” he commanded, the raven not sparing the time to even be alarmed by the missive before immediately winging above the treeline.

Shikaru-sensei took a breath, and unclipped two storage scrolls from his flack-jacket.

“Here. The mission objective, and Inoko's request,” he explained as he tossed the two scrolls at Ashi who was closest. “Tell Chomei I'm sorry.” He glanced over his shoulders with narrowed dark eyes before looking to his senior students, Ietsuna up ahead and so completely focused on putting as much distance between them and the Sannin as he could that he didn't notice. Probably for the best he didn't notice this particular goodbye. He would blame himself, stupid kid. “I'll buy you as much time as I can. Run hard. _Ietsuna_! How far out?”

The red head signed with a shaking hand, and Shikaru-sensei nodded, looking grim.

“Ten minutes'll have to do. Gimme your trap kits, kids. Let's see how bad of a day I can give him.”

 

* * *

 

They felt the explosions rattle through the soles of their feet fifteen minutes later.

They were barely an hour out from Konoha now, Ashi told them with her nose turned into the air. They had thought, and _hoped_ , that the Sannin would have decided against pursing them when he realised how close.... clearly it was a childish and futile one. When the only person you feared in all of Konoha was the Hokage himself, the chance of him coming to the rescue of one measly genin-team was slim to none.

His heart seized with dismay, and he hoped, he _prayed_ , that Shikaru-sensei survived long enough for him to apologise, because this was all his fault. The bright explosions in the back of his head of jutsus going off behind them made his stomach clench with sickening dread even as the ground shook below.

“DOWN!” Ashi suddenly screamed, all of them dropping without hesitation or even looking to see why.

Ietsuna felt his hair move strangely, cold air on sweat damp skin – something behind him, coming up fast.

He slid a foot too far forward as he landed on the next tree, and let gravity drag him down forward to the forest floor, tucking his body into a ball and flipping over so as not to lose any momentum. His knees and ankles jarred painfully as he landed, more so when he shot to his right without completely straightening up, zig zagging desperately through the trees as he felt Ashi, Migi, Hidari, and Shisui scrambling above him, chakra crackling through the air, in the branches, at his feet –

He jumped, freeing a hand to grab a tree branch and swing himself Tarzan-style to the left, up and over whatever Doton jutsu erupted the forest floor behind him. Kimimarou was slack deadweight on his back, bouncing around with every step, the sudden landing with only one hand to support him almost caused the six year old to spill forward and free over Ietsuna's shoulder if he hadn't panicked and grabbed him with a chakra point. If his feet could stick to trees, then surely his shoulder could stick to the kid! And free his arms up at the same time – yes!

A good thing too – the giant snake would have swallowed him whole if he hadn't caught himself, hands and feet, against its mouth as the colossal beast burst out from the shadows in a flush of blinding chakra smoke .

He flared his chakra through himself, reinforcing bones, muscles, ligaments, joints, cartilage – gods, his spine, all the disks, his spinal cord, he strained and cycled as much as he dared even as he felt the force above him trying to bare down. Even as it felt like he was going to crack his teeth, or pop his eyeballs out from their sockets just from the sheer _pressure_ –

It was strange how he couldn't smell carrion or rotting flesh.

He squinted his eyes open and felt the blood drain from his face as golden eyes met golden eyes, slit pupilled and inhuman.

“TSUNA!”

Shisui's chakra flashed behind him, and an arm slammed into his side dissolving the world in a storm of Fire-Hope-Feathers-Crashing water-Moonlight reflections-Guilt and Price and Fear-and not again, not this time! Before the world surfaced again, and the cold grass under his feet cushioned his foot as he ran, gasping for air as he snagged his awareness back on that beacon, so close and yet so far, on warmth and home.

Suffocating-Velvet erupted around them, dripping with malice and ruin and _youwillNOTtouchthem_ and the shadows came alive, lunging around him as he ran, Shisui at his side, flashing through handseals even as he jumped forward, hit a tree branch with his feet and bounced backwards, fire exploding from his mouth to fill the air, rushing through the tunnel of writhing black shadow and directly at their enemy, even as the force of the jutsu threw him once again level with Ietsuna. A neat little bit of chakra control.

“Sensei! Four!” Ashi's voice cracked out, warning their teacher of an approach on his right.

“How many clones does he _have?!_ ” Shisui snarled even as he threw a brace of shuriken and breathed out another torrent of flame to catch them, throw them further and ignite them.

When did Shikaru-sensei catch up?

Ietsuna gasped for air even as he slid limp, like a noodle, beneath a sudden kick lashing out at his head, he tore his knee open on a rock and threw himself once more into the air and into the branches where at least he would have some warning of doton jutsus coming up below him.

“Such speedy little prey you all are,” the Sannin complained, sounding almost amused even as his voice layered both genjutsu and futon chakra – enough so that he could be heard, no matter how softly he spoke, and to ignite the fear centres of the brain. Under the genjutsu Ietsuna had laid on himself, it did little but the affect on Shisui and Ashi wasn't to be dismissed, the girl, an Inuzuka to the core, almost immediately turned on heel and threw herself at him, half-mad with fear and determined to tear his throat out – because that was how Inuzuka were programmed, trained, in all the fear responses that all Shinobi had, an Inuzuka was _hardwired_ for Fight. Shisui hesitated for only a moment, his own response being to fight, but his training dictating to flee, but when she went for him, he couldn't leave her unsupported, he jumped into the fray too.

Ietsuna had barely a moment to register any of this before a pair of scrolls were spinning through the air over his head.

The mission scroll, and Inoko's request, whatever it was.

Ashi screamed furiously as she joined with both Migi and Hidari, the girl and dogs turning into a twisting blender of claws, teeth, and knives, backed up by Shisui's tanto and fire, and Shikaru-sensei's shadows.

Ietsuna sobbed as he snatched the scrolls, the two bouncing on the earth and almost directly into his hands as he ran.

“GATSUGA!”

He has a split second to identify the blast of animalistic feminine chakra before it was already past him and directly into the fray, Inuzuka Tsume, practically batting Shisui out of her path by the sheer wind-pressure of her attack even as she ploughed directly into the Snake Sannin without mercy.

Lightning jutsus arched through the air as on her heels came Uchiha Fugaku and an unknown Uchiha he didn't recognise, her long green-black hair feathered out behind her like crows' wings even as she summoned up blades of wind to scythe at the enemy, her blood red eyes tracking and directing her jutsu ruthlessly.

He took a step, feeling the ground beneath his foot, and then Yamanaka Inoichi was there, followed by Nara Shikaku and Akimichi Chouza, blowing past him at speed, the scarred Nara already shouting commands – a flicker of brown and white, one of the Hyuugas', impossible to tell which in uniform, it could have been Hiashi or Hizashi.

Why – why were they all here? They were just a genin team....

Ice-wind-high places appeared, flashing like the reflection of sunlight off a spider's web, and suddenly Hawk was at his elbow, was scooping both him and Kimimarou up without so much as a by your leave, a word, or an excuse. He drowned briefly in the man's chakra as the shunshin took them, as they fled the scene – it was only the brief backward glance, the sight of familiar masks, the touch of semi-familiar chakra, his team snatched up by ninja in white masks, his sensei braced between two of them, his long hair loose, shredded, his face covered in blood –

they burst into light at the gates, and vanished again, directly into the emergency entrance of the hospital.

He got a glimpse of mustered nurses and medics, and then they were swarmed.

The genjutsu on him was broken without so much as a by your leave and suddenly the world was _washed_ with light, and sound, and _pain_.

His legs gave out, and his chakra, bone dry, barely fumes, sputtered out, slipping through his fingers like sand. He suddenly felt.... cold. And hollow.

And then he didn't feel at all.

 

* * *

 

“ – surprised. He has the smallest reserves of his team,” a man's voice stated brusquely as he slowly surfaced from murky unconsciousness. “The stress fractures on every bone are of more concern. What sort of chakra augmentation were you _teaching_ him, Nara?”

“Absolutely none,” Shikaru-sensei's voice rasped through some kind of muffler, likely an oxygen mask.

“Orphan Genin don't just _stumble_ on this kind of technique without guidance!” the unknown man stressed angrily, the air wooshing around him as though he were waving something, judging by the flutter of papers, probably a clipboard or a file.

He heard sensei scoff a little, it sounded wet and uncomfortable in his chest and something twisted in his stomach, “No one on my team is an idiot, Fujiwara-san. I have an Uchiha genius, an Inuzuka with double the trouble, and thus far an unsurpassed chakra sensor, I'd be more surprised if he _hadn't_ noticed people augmenting themselves and copied them. That he did it successfully enough to hold a B-ranked Summon's mouth open only speaks volumes for his potential.”

The door slid open with barely a whisper, more a courtesy to the high-strung and recovering shinobi patients than anything else, “That is enough, Fujiwara-sensei,” the Hokage's voice interrupted as he stepped in, the only sound being the faint rustle of his robes on the flooring, he walked, as always, the way that only a veteran could. Completely soundlessly. There was a stilted silence, and then the sound of the door closing with... not quite a _snap_ , but with the definite disapproval of the medic who had likely just left.

Christ. Ietsuna felt deaf, dumb, and blind. His head stuffed with hot cotton wool, his eyes crusted shut, and everything just too far away and dull to bother with.

“ – report from the rest of Team Five. The child Ietsuna-kun rescued is quite beside himself for being separated from Orochimaru, as many of his foundlings tended to be,” the Hokage was saying tiredly, the only sound in the room being the wet rasping of sensei's chest as he breathed.

“Rehabilitation will take a while then?” sensei asked roughly.

There was a rustle of fabric, “Surprisingly not, I should think. Despite his current attachment, the child was only with him for two moons. The rest of his existence prior was apparently spent locked beneath his clan's estate in a stone cell. Evidentally his exponentially powerful Kekkei Genkai manifestation unsettled them to great levels. I am surprised they didn't kill him,” the Hokage admitted softly with another rustle, likely a shake of his head. The smell of smoke drifted under his nose, was he smoking in the hospital? Surely he knew better with Tsunade as a student.... “Were this a time of war, I would be giving all of Team Five field promotions,” he finally admitted at length.

“And I would argue to the back teeth against it. At least in Ietsuna's case,” Shikaru-sensei grunted, shifting in his bedding.

“Oh, care to explain?”

“He's got a hardwired Flight response we need to train out of him first,” the Nara explained, gasping wetly for air. “All the talent, Chakra sense, and control in the world isn't going to work for shit if he's too terrified to actually use it for more than getting the hell out of dodge. Not only that, but personality wise, he is the _worst_ shinobi I have ever met. He's far too kind for this line of work.”

“In that, at least, I agree with you. But his skill far outweighs his personality defects, not to mention the promise of future potential. There is a reason I placed him with you.” The smell of smoke got thicker for a moment, and he as much as he wanted to snort it away, he couldn't. He couldn't even twitch a finger. He could barely follow the conversation going on around him.

“Yeah, yeah, Inoko and Choumei acting as emotional and mental support stick and carrot while I lay a foundation and keep him alive. Just so you know, I'm still pissed you yanked me from ANBU,” sensei complained breaking into harsh rattling coughs that the Hokage politely waited out, even as what little of Ietsuna's brain was still free of cotton wool began to freak out a little. Shikaru-sensei was _ANBU?!_ Wait. Ino-Shika-Cho formations after the original trio were set in stone, you didn't just take a cornerstone out, that meant they were _all_ ANBU.

The Hokage waited for silence, the sound of sensei's wet panting settling down into only slightly pained breathing before, “You will need to hurry him along, and quickly.” Shikaru-sensei made a strange noise, curiosity, annoyance, indignation, it was hard to tell, “He has garnered Orochimaru's personal attention now, and I have very little doubt my former student still has contacts in the village. Likely as not he is now aware of just how powerful a sensor Ietsuna-kun is, on top of his perfect chakra control.”

“Permission to shove him into medical training and wash my hands of this whole headache, sir?”

“Denied.”

“Fuck.”

 

* * *

 

Chakra exhaustion was an absolute _cunt_.

If at all possible, Ietsuna would like to avoid it forever, please and thankyou.

He would also like to avoid Migi's tongue all over his face, but given how the puppy had him pinned to his bed, and he was still trying to claw himself out of the woolly confines of unconsciousness, he couldn't really stop the animal from laving his mouth and nose with his tongue.

“Migi! Down!” the puppy whined at Ashi's command but abandoned him to land on the floor, nails making audible noises as he heard his teammate tromping over, making no effort to conceal her approach before her sleeve was rubbing his face, scrubbing the saliva off but also mashing his nose and lips uncomfortably from side to side, “Sorry about that Tsu-kun. You've been out of it for half a week now, we were getting worried,” she explained as he slowly cracked open his crusty tired eyes.

Her hair was down, and there was a fading bruise on her jaw that wasn't quite hidden by the herb-soaked compress taped over it. She was wearing her own casual clothing, a pretty yellow top with layered sleeves that were _almost_ ruffled, he couldn't see far enough to see if she wore her usual trousers but it was likely. Hidari was on his bed, on his otherside down by his thigh, she wagged her tail and nosed his fingers when he glanced her way. Unlike her brother, she was much more well behaved, and kept her tongue to herself, so he had no problem with rubbing her head in greeting.

“Sui just went to go refill the water jug so give him a few,” she explained as she dragged a chair over and sat next to him. “We're both okay, minor injuries despite everything. Sensei's going to be down and out for a month though,” she admitted with a grimace and a glance over her shoulder. Ietsuna slowly rolled his head, neck muscles aching and protesting the whole way until he saw the sleeping lump of their teacher on the bed beside him, and the generously proportioned form of Akimichi Choumei dosing in the chair beside him, her hand in his, their fingers laced. Oh. He hadn't – he thought relations between the three clans was frowned upon?

Choumei was considered a particular beauty amidst the Akimichi, five foot five inches, she had a wide hourglass shape and thighs that could crush a man's rib-cage into splinters like a Fabergé egg. She had fat-stores for days and could burn it down to her bones without risking her internal organs with how she had built and distributed it across her frame, with the exception of their new clan head, she was one of the youngest in their clan to master their titan jutsus – the ability to enlarge her whole self into a giantess. She rarely did so, but she had a casual mastery of all the enlargement jutsu that was both startling and.... benign? It was only surprising when you stopped to think about it, the moment you stepped into her home you could expect to find her stretching an arm from her spot at the table to the bookshelf ten feet away to collect a research scroll, or to drop a dirty cup into the sink in the _kitchen_. How she would enlarge a hand, pick up the couch you sat on, in order to sweep beneath it before setting you down without so much as flicking an eyelid. With her thick chestnut coloured braids, green eyes, and pink dimpled cheeks, she looked like any comely village maiden you would likely find manning a local Ryokan or perhaps behind the bar. She was very much night and day compared to the fashionably elegant willow-frond Inoko.

“Orochimaru punched _through_ his chest. They had to rebuild a few of his lower ribs, and regenerate his pancreas. Inoko's sworn to make a poison that's going to melt the snake's insides and kill him horribly for it,” Ashi explained as he turned away from the scene of the two teammates.

He tried to apologise, but his throat wouldn't let him, it stuck, dry and painful, cords practically tearing at each other until he gave it up so he could wait for water.

Thankfully Shisui wasn't long. The Uchiha had a nasty cut on his forehead, and the tip of his left ear had a piece of tape over it with a slightly red spotted compress, Ashi glared at it as he walked in, “Were you scratching your ear again?!” she demanded, making the Uchiha jump a little.

“No!” he refused quickly. Too quickly.

“Then why is it bleeding?!” the Inuzuka demanded sharply.

Shisui grimaced, realising his error, but didn't answer as he quickly bustled to Ietsuna's bedside and poured him some water. “I'm glad you're awake, here, slowly now,” he said, holding the glass up to the red head's lips, and letting him sip slowly.

“I – I'm sorry,” he rasped once he could. “This is my fault, I'm so sorry.”

Ashi groaned, “Oh no, not another one!” she groused even as Shisui pressed his lips together unhappily, guiltily, and looked away. “You made the right call, Tsu-kun. If you hadn't acted when you did, we'd have been a lot further away from Konoha when he caught up, and _yeah_ , there might have been a slim chance he would have ignored us if you hadn't snatched the kid, but on a team with an Uchiha? It's unlikely. Not only did we secure a new jutsu library for Konoha, as well has medical and poison samples for Inoko-san, but we also got our village a shiny new Kekkei Genkai that's now practically extinct in Kiri, _and_ valuable intelligence on both the civil war in Mizu, and Orochimaru's movements in the Hidden Nations.”

Was there any way to explain that he knew Orochimaru would have ignored them because he knew Shisui survived long enough to reach his sixteenth birthday at the very least? No. Was there any way to explain that he had risked them all anyway, and their futures, just because of his own stupid moral high ground?

No.

He should have let the Snake Sannin kill him. Or – fuck, that was his best opportunity to fake his own death in a believable way. If he got into a tangle with the snake, no one would come looking for him afterwards. They would just assume he was dead, or that he was better off dead.

He closed his eyes miserably.

He was so selfish.

He was going to get them all killed, one way or another.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And done. Poor Ietsuna. Such stress, much anxiety, and now depression.
> 
> In other news, I have a new job, I'll be working in security soon, just got to wait for the company to pass my clearances and arrange some civil aviation training so that I can wander site unescorted. So it'll be a month or two until I can leave my current place of work (thank absolute FUCK). Is £10 an hour as well, four days a week, ten hours a day. So hopefully soon I'll even be able to start looking into driving lessons and a car! 8DD 
> 
> Had surgery yesterday too to deal with the lump on my back, it was... an experience. I'm still cleaning dry blood out of my ear after the surgeon did something that had it squirting up the side of my head. Also, I learned something interesting. Apparently anxiety makes local anaesthetic less effective. So while I thought, at the time, that they weren't using enough or rushing things along, it turns out that it's just my body doing the typical asshole thing it usually does of “Pain relief? Hah, no no, we shan't be taken in by nonsense like that. Try again.”. My dentist actually has it on note that I require a double dose so I get TWO injections in my mouth if I need work done.


End file.
